Want to protect your foundation from structural damage and water problems? Think carefully before calling basement waterproofing companies. Most foundation water issues are not solved by the systems these companies install, whether it is basement waterproofing, sump pumps, or other basement drain systems. Yet foundation companies are consistently selling people $10k-$15k systems that do nothing to correct the problem. The problem is almost always your exterior grading and drainage. Let me explain how this works.
When it rains the water doesn’t always get routed away from the house as it should. Your roof drainage systems (gutters and downspouts) may not be correctly moving water away from the house. The ground around your house may not be sloped correctly. This excessive water inevitably soaks into the soil, seeps through foundation cracks, and weakens soil under the house causing structural movement, and more cracks. Most basement waterproofing companies want to deal with this by waiting until the water gets under the house and then pumping it away. Let me ask you, doesn’t it make sense to stop the water at its source, from the outside, or wait until it’s under the house? Yeah, it’s that simple. Get the water away from the outside.
How do you correctly get the water away from your house? First off, be sure your roof gutters are clean and drain freely. Second, extend your gutter downspouts AWAY from the house structure. This is harder to do than it may seem and sometimes requires very careful measurements of the ground slope and also burying the pipes to protect them. Third, ensure the ground immediately around the house is slope away from the house.
You may be asking yourself: When is an interior basement drain system actually needed? Not often. These systems are mostly to protect the basement from a rising water table, not stormwater runoff. In some locations, the water table (which is the boundary between saturated earth and unsaturated earth) intersects with the bottom of your basement. Think of it like this: if you dig a hole in the ground, you will eventually find water. Sometimes you have to dig a few feet (like when the house is near a river) and sometimes you have to dig hundreds of feet (like in a desert). The elevation of the water table varies depending on seasonal changes. If the water table is high enough to reach the bottom of your basement, you’ll have water on the floor of your basement, and you need a sump pump. If you see the water ABOVE the floor of your basement, like water staining on your basement walls, you probably need exterior grading and drainage improvements.
We work with a company in Maryland called Foundation Management and Drainage where we design the drain systems, and they install them. It’s a great partnership. Before spending money on an expensive drain system, you should really have a proper evaluation to ensure you get the right system installed.
