OMG so much water!!!!!

[Stina]

Holy crap........so Steve walks into the laundry room for smt and goes "oh my god!" and laughs.....and tells me to come over.......and there is water GUSHING through the wall into the basement and about 1/4" to 1" of water (floor isn't quite level) on the floor............ We've been fighting the water since we bought the house and thought we were winning..........I guess not since this is the most water we've had down there since we bought it...lol Luckily we haven't got much of anything down there.....the biggest issue is that the electrical panel is down there...but not at floor level. I went to look outside and one of the steps off the deck was washed away a foot and the sumps have been overflowing some sort of foam.......they normally empty into the stream, but the stream is up so high its backing up the downspout from the gutters (which run into the same pipe to the stream as the sumps).

Here's some photos Steve took......
foam??!!

Washed away step...

Water off the other side of the deck (that is the corner of the house)

Off the corner of the deck...all the grass in that area is full of water.......that is a "fire pit" "in front of" the stream.......that is basically a small pond now.....

The stream overflowing behind....normally its maybe 2' across... There's a tree back there too that we think is more crooked than it used to be....

There used to be lawn at the back of this photo.........for now its part of the stream...

 

[19Dawn76]

OMG! Ya'll might need scuba gear soon.

 

[Stina]

Supposedly the house itself (besides the basement....) has never flooded in the 50 or so years its been here....so hopefully that won't be required!

 

[English Chick]

Oh my goodness!!!

......... we have a well that runs under our house with an overflow "outlet" in the celler, heavy rain and the cellar floods....... but our house has stood for 200 years and is still going strong (fingers crossed) ....... the foam looks like laundry detergent, are any of your outlets pipes blocked up with mud etc?

Good luck but I don't envy you.....

 

[Stina]

laundry is not in any way hooked up to the sumps...nor was it draining into the basement (the pouring water would have produced suds if it was).....so I have no idea what caused the suds.....

 

[English Chick]

Quote:
It's a bummer, hope you get it fixed up though...........

 

[HennysMom]

Quote:
Ahhhhhhhhh!! the dreaded flood

Been there, done it and WON THE BATTLE!!

our house is 148 years old and our cellar flooded constantly (we didnt know that when we bought the house, no one told us) so we woke up quite a few times to a foot or more in the cellar - and many a ruined item. We finally got it all fixed

and with all this torrential rain we've been getting we havent had one leak!

You will need the following:

Hydraulic quick dry cement (buy the large buckets, not the small ones, its about $40.00 per bucket and a little goes a long way).

Dry lock (about $29.00 per gallon)


You and your hubby will have to work in small batches as the hydraulic cement dries very fast - make it thin enough to work with but thick enough to trough on an upright wall surface if needed. If the batch you have (we used a butter bowl size each and worked quickly) starts to harden - you can add a TINY bit of water, you dont want it too thin - and continue working. PLEASE MIX THE CEMENT OUTSIDE AND WEAR A PROTECTIVE MASK WHILE DOING SO - it contains silica and other nasties and it is very fine, like powedered sugar - wear a mask when mixing, opening! You will want to go over every surface that is below grade with at least with 1/4 to 1/2 and inch of hydraulic cement, making sure you cram it in all nooks and crannies. Pay special attention to where the wall and floor meet - and if you can pull drywall corners - you can pull a corner with cement

. It helps to have masonary tools to accomplish all of this. Do the floor last (and dont work yourself into corners). If you have stairs below grade, do them too.

After the cement has completely dried (about 2 days or more for full dry time, but it will harden in about 15 minutes or sooner - it will turn from dark grey to a light grey fully dried) - then you use Dry-Lock and dry lock the entire wall/floor area. Dry lock works best with a brush for corners but you can use a low nap roller for the walls and floor. It is very thick almost like pudding so it takes alot to cover and you do not thin it out. This creates a water tight moisture barrier on your block/cement.

After you dry lock - let it all dry and cure about a week (dry lock is white) - then you can paint whatever color you want, including the floor (remember to use paint specific for cement floor).

Our cellar is roughly 30X15 and partially above ground *about 1/4 above, 3/4 below* (we used 2 buckets of hydraulic cement and 3 gallons of drylock for less than $200) is now water tight and we are thrilled to death!!

Worth every penny as experts were nearly $1,000 to do the same thing we did.

Good luck!


PS. If you're wondering why Hydraulic cement and not "regular" cement - its because hydraulic cement is the only cement that can be used to plug an active leak if you have one coming in. So if you currently can see where the water is coming in, you can mix up hydraulic cement and patch (just dont make it too wet or it'll slide right out of the crack) an active leak!

It's also made for any damp block/cement and will work to hold true so no water can break it away as with regular mortar/cement.

 

[Bluemoon420]

Yep, we are in the process of doing the same thing. Our house is 109 years old, and we have an old cistern in our basement that will get water in it when we have heavy rain. The rest of our basement stays relatively dry. It's just the cistern area. We have to use broshes for the dry lock because our walls are stone, but it works. Much less expensive to do it yourself too.

Bluemoon

 

[Stina]

heh.....we had a contractor come in to do the basement and they completely redid the floor...which made a big difference....but all they did on the walls was patch obvious places and then drylock everything......so all the walls already have drylock on them....but the gaps/holes/grooves weren't filled/covered properly first.