We’ve been blessed with several exciting new projects at Fivecat Studio, so please forgive my absence from the blog.
With all the rain we’ve been having, I thought I would share my thoughts on wet basements.
Occasionally a client will ask how they can dry up a wet basement and finish the space to increase their living area. My answer is always the same… excavate at your foundation and expose your footings, install footing drains (perforated pipe, crushed stone and filter fabric to keep the pipes free from silt) and apply a waterproofing system to the exterior surface of your foundation wall. Then backfill with clean crushed stone and slope the finish grade away from the house. The pipes should slope and drain to atmosphere or be connected to a drywell. This will work every time, but yes, it is expensive and very disruptive to your landscaping.
The alternative is to attack the problem from inside the basement. The idea of permitting water into your house, then mechanically pumping it back out, always makes my professional hairs stand up, but Dad recently sent me a great article from The Journal of Light Construction illustrating how such an interior perimeter drainage system should be installed. It certainly would save you the expense and gardening time required of the exterior system.
I still say, if you can access the footings from the outside, keep the water out. If not, a properly installed interior system may just do the trick.
