rainwater comes into our basement from underground -- help

What kind of service do we call to check on this and fix it? I am so clueless....

on how the rainwater is getting into your basement.

Is it seeping through the walls?

in the floor. Our basement is underground in the front of the house, and that's where it's coming in. I hope they don't have to rip up the porch. That's where we feed the ferals.

sigh

engineer on home building to get an assessment. Are you near the water? We had a house built and had this problem and they had to build up the foundation. The basement ended up being 61/2' instead of the usual 8'. Does it happen when it rains or is it also dependent on the tides? Our problem was the water table and it got wet when the tides were high not just during rain.

We're about 3-4 miles from the Potomac. That's too far to worry about river water, I think... But what the hell do I know. I'm a Pacific beach bum. :shrug:

they'll consult for free, most times.

It could be a slab leak.There are companies that can come to your house with an ultra-sensitive microphone to find where the leak is coming from.Good luck.

But again -- :shrug:

thanks for the good wishes

or 6-8 feet away. Also does the ground slope away from the house? sometime the ground settles around the house and the water cannot drain away.

underground. Our downspouts on that side of the house end at the base of the house, so the water's not going anywhere but into the basement, apparently. Good catch, RC.

I'm ignorant. What is that?

http://landscaping.about.com/cs/lazylandscaping/ht/French_drains.htm

"If your neighbor’s land stands at a higher elevation than yours, you may be experiencing problems with excessive moisture on your property. Water from your neighbor’s property may be running down the slope and spilling onto your property. You need better yard drainage. One option in such cases is installing French drains. When some people speak of a “French drain,” they refer to a trench in which a drain pipe is laid, but the traditional French drain is basically a trench filled with gravel."

Difficulty: Average

The how to follows in the article.

:)

Time Required: Depends on extent of water flow and ground to traverse.

I have them and my neighbor is now installing them in his yard as well.

Typically they are required when ground slopes toward a home but not always.

(maybe more, but two of the top of my head)

1. rising water table--consult an engineer

2. negative drainage around the base of your house. This means that somewhere around the ground level of your house, the ground slopes down toward the house instead of away from it. The rainwater runs down the outside of the basement wall and seeps in at the base of the basement wall. Fix the negative drainage. A little gravel and work with a shovel is probably all it will take.

Had a waterproofing contractor come out and estimate me $10,000 to put interior and exterior french drains with a false floor. Told him thanks for the bid and never called him back.

Found out doing it myself will save me over $8,000 and all I really need to worry about is a backhoe.

My situation only gets worse when it rains as well. I'd look up the waterproofing contractor and see what they say.

Then you can use the rainwater to water your garden when it is dry. You can even link two barrels to the same downspout, and put extension downspouts out from the rainbarrels to take care of over flow if it is a particularly bad rain..this gets the immediate downpour further away and hopefully down slope from your basement. Of course the usual best cure is a French drain, as noted above.


When we had basement flooding problems in Evansville INdiana, it was due to the storm drains filling up with debris, causing the stormdrain to backflow in to the storm drain in our basement. We always had plenty of warning as the water would pool around the drain for a while before it got out into the rooms themselves. We would just unplug everything, get everything off the floor, and wait it out. Once it was about 18 inches deep..and once the rain stopped and the storm drains outside emptied, then we would empty too. Then we had to clean upt he sand of course.

Our house is older. The downspouts go into some very, very old clay drainage pipes. Over the years, those clay pipes have cracked. It didn't take much digging to figure out what was going on. No more flooded basement!

As a temporary solution (if it is your drain pipes), you can simply divert them using some black flexible pipe along the ground until you can dig up the pipes and replace them.

(I live in a church parsonage, so "someone else" does the major maintenance.)

They discussed many options, but decided to build up the foundation around the basement - laying several yards of dirt around the areas where water was pooling. I had my doubts, but believe it or not, I've not had a single problem with it since last year.

This area is near the lake, and many homes are built over underground springs. I guess it was a "saturation" problem. Just make sure the rain has somewhere to go, away from the foundation.