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Been a fairly moist week, and this evening has been one of the first good long rains of the year. I appear to have a crack in my basement wall a little below the soil level, and in the last several hours it has put two pints of water on my floor, and appears to be flowing rather than seeping. It isn't going to stop raining all week. How bad is this going to be? There appears to have been a general settling of the house, and there is a currently not moist and possibly not related crack across the entire length of the basement concrete floor, and another, possibly unrelated, but apparently new crack across the concrete garage floor. Did half of my house subside? or are these things unrelated? If half of my house did subside, then what? Are there emergency measures I should take? are they emergent enough that I should go to wallmart tonight to get a can of what(?) to smear on it? 
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| # ? Mar 18, 2013 02:42 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 09:28 |
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From the staining around the crack it looks like it's been going on a while. Short term, especially when it's flowing - no real fix. My house came with a sump pump just for this. Turns out being two blocks from a tidal creek is not a good place for a basement. During a hurricane there was a teeny jet of water shooting out from the wall for a few days. For you, mop it up or it can get really musty down there. Long term, after it dries out some, you have more options. The problem with spray-on or brush-on stuff is that the water is pressing from the outside, and it's easier for it to push the repair away from the crack and leak again. It looks like an outside wall - in which case you can dig out the area on the other side down to the bottom of the concrete. Then use sealant. If the crack is pretty wide, your best bet is to get an angle grinder and grind out the crack and fill in with hydraulic cement. This stuff works because it expands while setting, forcing itself against the sides and sealing better. Then seal over the patch. If you can't (or don't want to) do all that digging, use the angle grinder to grind out the crack, making sure the gouge is narrower on the inside surface of the concrete than it is deeper in. Think reverse vee-shape. Then use the hydraulic cement. This works because the expansion forces it to fill and seal the crack. Option three - hire some guys (should be some in your area) that do foundation and basement repair. They'll drill and use expanding urethane foam to seal the crack. In any case, get on this as soon as possible - flowing water will only make the problem worse as time goes on.
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| # ? Mar 18, 2013 03:21 |
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MrUnderbridge posted:
Excellent, thanks. Will call for a quote and see how much I like money more than digging.
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| # ? Mar 18, 2013 03:49 |
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Use the water to feed the moths. Waste not want not.
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| # ? Mar 18, 2013 07:17 |
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Take a look at the ground outside that window. Does it slope away from the house? If it has either no slope or slopes toward the house, there is more water there than you want there to be and it needs to be fixed. I had to fix a basement leak at my parents' house a few years back, and this was thebulk of the problem. Luckily, you don't have a finished basement. It is impossible to keep all water out of basements, but obviously a trickle coming in is not ideal. Use local specialists to fix it, as basements have different issues due to different soil, climates, etc. For example, here in the Red River Valley (dry glacial lake bed) of Eastern ND/Western MN, the soil is pure clay, it's completely flat, it floods often, and freezes 4 feet deep in the winter. This does horrible things to foundations, and the local contractors have mostly figured out over the years how to keep basements dry-ish.
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| # ? Mar 18, 2013 14:52 |
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Check your gutters and make sure the water is flowing away from the house. My parent's house had this issue for years while I was growing up. Someone suggested that we dig a shallow trench and bury some pipe to carry the rain water from the gutters away from the house. Problem solved.
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| # ? Mar 18, 2013 19:42 |
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I have been dealing with the same type of issues in our new to us house. I agree that it looks like that crack has been leaking for a while. It also looks like it has been repaired before. Do the simple things first: Check your gutters are clear and downspouts point away from the house. Check the lay of the land around your house to ensure proper drainage of water away from your foundation. Concrete cracks over time. It is the type of crack that you have to look out for. We had two companies come in to check our foundation to see what could be done. All of our cracks are cosmetic, meaning it is old concrete and it cracks. However, not all cracks are cosmetic and you may want get a couple of people in to take a look at your foundation just for piece of mind. Also, you can spend a ton of time looking for resources and reading up. If you have the time, great. If not, having a couple of people in to assess and quote costs you less time. It is always nice to have someone else confirm what exactly is going on, even better when a competitor or two of his comes in and says the same thing. Quick fix, hydraulic cement. It sets up in water and swells to fill the whole space you are cramming it into. We used it for a bit of a river flowing in through the foundation where the water pipe from the city comes in. Way to seal it previous owners! My bitterness aside, it worked quite well. After the large amount of rain stopped, I checked the downspout from the gutters and yes, one was pointed to flow right at the house. I moved it so the river slowed greatly. Then filled the hole according to the instructions on the container of hydraulic cement. It has a short working time so do all your reading and prep first. Since I was parging over the basement walls anyway, it wasn't a pretty fix but did the job really well. This spring I will be digging up the foundation to get at the outside of the walls and waterproofing them before installing weeping tile (also known as french drains) to reduce the hydrostatic pressure. Water is no fun but it can be worked with and around. Regardless of the work you do inside, unless you seal the cracks, waterproof from the outside and ensure that the water when it hit the ground travels away from the house, water will still get in and you work will be for nothing. It does buy you a year or two to get the funds together to properly fix your house though. Good luck, and do let us know how things go.
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| # ? Mar 30, 2013 21:55 |
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Unless the ground water is that high Proper landscaping will fix this issue without the need for disclosing the foundation repair or past flooding issues.. Probably the cheapest option as well.
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| # ? Apr 1, 2013 07:06 |
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I bought my house 7 years ago and have had water problem every spring. Two year's ago I had some guys come and install a french drain on the outside as well as a sump pump on the inside. I had no problems with the water last year but this year its back worse than it has been in the past. I had a guy come out today and he quoted me almost 7k to fix the problem. He said they would dig up the back of the foundation and reseal it and put in a new french drain (he said the other one was installed incorrectly). They would also regrade the area directly behind the house where water pools and install a runoff trench with piping to the side of the yard (about 75 feet). He said it would take 2 days with 2 guys and machinery to complete. Does this price seem fair for this amount of work? I really just wanted this problem fixed and he said he guarantees his work.
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| # ? Apr 2, 2013 16:53 |
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Linco posted:I bought my house 7 years ago and have had water problem every spring. Two year's ago I had some guys come and install a french drain on the outside as well as a sump pump on the inside. I had no problems with the water last year but this year its back worse than it has been in the past. I had a guy come out today and he quoted me almost 7k to fix the problem. He said they would dig up the back of the foundation and reseal it and put in a new french drain (he said the other one was installed incorrectly). They would also regrade the area directly behind the house where water pools and install a runoff trench with piping to the side of the yard (about 75 feet). He said it would take 2 days with 2 guys and machinery to complete. Does this price seem fair for this amount of work? I really just wanted this problem fixed and he said he guarantees his work. His word isn't worth poo poo. Check to see if he's licensed/bonded, and insured, and get the warranty in writing.
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| # ? Apr 2, 2013 19:23 |
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:His word isn't worth poo poo. Check to see if he's licensed/bonded, and insured, and get the warranty in writing. I asked him to send me a itemized quote, and the first thing on the list was $450 for a 10 gallon bucket of foundation tar. Needless to say it was pretty comical reading down the list to come up with 7k.
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| # ? Apr 3, 2013 14:37 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 09:28 |
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Look into epoxy injection. The precast plant I work at uses it all the time for repairs. Unfortunately, the concrete needs to be dry for this to work, so it's a not a quick fix. It is a much less expensive fix than digging up your weeping tile and resealing your foundation from the outside. It's also very DIY friendly. As for immediate action, the only thing I can think of aside from what's already been mentioned is to get a long, wide sheet of thick plastic and lay it along side your house. Run it up the wall a few inches, but cover as much ground near your house as you can. Run it left and right of the crack as far as you can. This *should* reduce the amount rain water in the ground next to your house, which in turn should reduce the amount of water flowing into your house.
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| # ? Apr 6, 2013 00:05 |
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