Basement water intrusion

[Coldjensens]

It is groundwater. No idea why the drain system is not handling it. Solution is to remove a bit of the concrete aboce the footing, put in a squished looking drain pipe on top of the footing and replae the concrete. They will guarantee no water for "life" They say it is the life of hte home, but it is really the life of the company.

Looks like a good system. Cost is $4600 plus the cost of rebuiding and refinishing floors walls, etc.

[Barking Spider]

I would have guessed ground water when you said you put in a sump pump system and they are always pumping water out.

It rains a lot and you don't have gutters? Reason??????

I hope that both sumps are discharging outside the house and draining AWAY from the foundation.

[Coldjensens]

One discharges 108 feet away from the house into a ditch. (That was a bear to instal) the other drains out the side of a fairly steep slope. It is very strang becuase all the walls where water comes in have concrete slab (porch) or a deck above them. Not sure how is it getting in there, but it is. I think that the water is traveling under ground. The ground is the densest clay that you will ever see and water mostly runs off of it and does nto soak in.

An "expert" decided it was ground water earlier by tasting it. Based on this "professional testing" the insurance company denied our claim.

So much for airconditiuoning or a car this year.

Our house was built in 1836. I am not sure gutters existed. However the house is not designed for gutters, it is hard to explain. I will eventually put a gutter ont he back porch roof, it is new and can be guttered and I am tired of a back full of cold water when I leave.

[Pruzhany]

We have a pretty new basement (2006).

I'd probably go back to the engineering report and see what ground testing was done. You may have some recourse based on what soil tests were done. Its leeching back up due to disturbed ground. The system in place cant handle it probably due to out of norm rains raising the water table and the rains not seeping into the grounds. Thus your insurance is basically stating its flood caused. You may want to check if your area was/is in a flood plane.

[Coldjensens]

THe next step:

THe night before they were supposed to come jackhammer up the floors, we finally got someone to come out with one of those crawling camera things. He said that the sump pumps were not hooked up to anything. THe pipe just goes a few feet and ends at the foundation wall.

I called the guy who put it in and then called and cancelled the scheduled repair work until we can find out more. Maybe we can just tie it into the system and we do not need to jackhammer up the floors.


THe guy who installed the basement called back and said that we have Formdrains on the inside of the footings and that these connect to the drains on the outside of the footings. I reached into one of the pipes and felt a vertical plastic shape at the end of the pipe. This must be a formdrain. IU looked it up on the internet and it makes sense. I hope that we also have PVC pipe drain on the outside, but I need to ask to make certain. There is some sand in the bottom of the formdrain, but less than an inch.

I do nto see how the prposed repair system is much different than the formdrain. the prposed system is a squished pipe that lays on top of the footing. Ti fromdrain is only hald an inch away from that location. How is the squished pipe thing going to be any better?

Now we are still in the dark. Why do we get water coming into the basement? Is it going to start coming in everywhere? How can we get some neutral advice from someone who is not trying to sell us something?