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Re: GBlist: a green 'cure' for wet basements?



Leslie:

Your water problem doesn't sound normal. I could be led to believe that
water is coming in (as opposed to condensing out of the basement air). Is
one wall or areas more greatly affected than others?

The first things to check include grading and downspouts. Is rainwater
encouraged to flow away from the house?  I'm still amazed at the number of
splash blocks that are instalI backwards. Also, look for hidden
pathologies. In the house that we bought a couple of years ago, the
previous owner had failed to fill in postholes from a hastily removed
fence. Found the abandoned holes in the yard easily enough, but one hole
right next to the basement stairwell had been covered with a rubber mat and
the flowerbed had been allowed to overgrow. The stairwell consistently
flooded, leading him to install a cup drain that led to nowhere. I fixed it
with a few spadefulls of soil tamped into the hole the day after we moved in.

Other things to be concerned about include weirdnesses like fossil stream
beds conducting water to inconvenient spots (less likely, but possible),
and details like leaking hose bibs for the outside taps.

Do you have central forced-air heat/AC? If so, is the basement treated as a
conditioned zone?

Don't, by the way, finish off the basement until you get the water
situation under control.

... Harry
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