If you have a basement, or like we do at our building here in Knoxville where we’ve got water intrusion coming through the cinder block walls, you likely need to do some interior waterproofing.
We wanted to go over some things you can do as a homeowner to fix your own basement or to give you some information about how to judge whether the interior waterproofing company you’re using is the right fit for you.
Basement Waterproofing Wall Panels
This is an example that most people have in their basements or even in garages where they have a cinder block, or a concrete wall, or some type of foundation wall. Typically the outside foundation drainage pipe has failed and what’s happening is the path of least resistance for the water is through the wall.
As you can see, we’ve got some water marks up high here. So we decided to put our wallboard right about where ground-level is on the other side of the wall. Keep in mind, if you have a basement where the dirt outside is higher, you will want to take this wallboard all the way up as high as the dirt, if not a little bit higher.
Basement Perimeter Drain System
Before installing the wall panels, we jackhammered and dug out all of the concrete slab and we put in a french drain easy flow pipe down underneath the gravel.
As you can see, we backfilled all of the gravel. And then we’ve got the wall panels tucked behind that. That way, as the water comes in from the outside, it hits this wall panel and is forced down into the trench that we’ve dug and where that french drain pipe can grab that water and then shoot it to the sump pump.
Stormwater Catch Basin Drains
Another problem we’ve had to address is we’ve got a slope that comes at our garage door. We put in these NDS Catch Basins that you can drive on since we will have real heavy equipment coming in through this door. If this was your home, you would probably put this basin on the outside where the driveway meets the foundation of the wall, but because of how our setup is, we had nowhere for the water to go because it’s kind of a low area back here. We decided to put these catch basins inside, then that way the water will drain to our sump pump.
So these are really good. They can be ordered online or you can get them at your local landscaping store. They have walk-on basins, which are thinner, but these are designed that you can drive on.
Basement Sump Pumps
Lastly, no great waterproofing project is gonna be complete, whether it’s in a basement or a crawl space, without a really great sump pump.
This is the Flotec E50VLT. It is a cast iron sump pump and this dude is heavy. It’s got a float switch, and as this float switch goes up, it pumps the water right here.
You’ll connect it to a pipe to drain outside the building. We typically install a popup valve at the end of the pipe outside. You want to make sure that all of the basement waterproofing goes into your sump pump basin. We use the Jackel Sump Pump Basins available on our DIY store along with all of the products you need to hook up your sump pump. We’ve also got the half inch coupler right here. So whenever we need to maintenance the sump pump or if we have to replace it, we can just disconnect this and take the sump pump out.
Basement Dehumidifiers
And finally, finally, make sure if you’ve got a basement or a crawl space with staining water issues, just because you address the staining water issue, you could still have a humidity problem, so always make sure you get a good dehumidifier for that basement and crawl space even after you address the staining water.
You can get all this stuff on our DIY store and we hope that you found this information helpful! Make it a happy and blessed day. We’ll see you later.