Billbill84
Well-Known Member
Hi guys. I've posted a while back about issues I've had when we had heavy downpour and flooding window wells, water seeping in the fully finished basement we love so much in a home we just bought last January!
Burst sump discharge line in the wall, and water settling too close to the foundation due to poor grading. House was built in 2001 so this is not a new issue, but for us it is unfortunate.
Another heavy rain and this time I go check on how things are running in the sump room which I had partly unfinished due to the broken discharge line we had about 4 months ago. So it's raining heavily, I'm sipping a cold beer after a long day at work and the pit is taking so much water that the pump is literally firing every 15-20 seconds.
Pit was rising about 1" per second! But all is operational and I come back down to check things out again before going to bed and JEZUZ..... everything running pump wise but I SEE WATER ON THE FLOOR BEHIND THE WALL STUDS!!!!!
I immediately go outside to investigate. I see a good about of standing water about 2ft from the foundation wall. It's only 2-3" deep and maybe 14" wide, but pretty long as this river-like puddle sorta wraps around that corner of the house for about 12 feet or so,(foundation walls are visible roughly 18" above grade with no cracks and in great shape from what can been seen). I do believe the surrounding soil was in fact over saturated preventing enough run off.
The window well closest to this area with water is completely flooded from the bottom up, the sides of well and top are sealed up with 75lbs of silicone! The water didn't leak in at the window though because it's sealed off with a ton of flex seal and the water didn't get up to the window but was close!
I pull the cover and removed 98% of the water and put a 10 ft downspout extension on the gutter, went back in grabbed a beer now here I am
Looking at my photos, you can see why it's hard to track this one down because part of that room has the drywall up still and where ever this water is seeping in at it came from behind that drywall first and then slowly seeped to where it's highly visible as shown in the pics below.
The weird thing is that its starting point is somewhere behind that drywall, yet that area outside is graded good and didn't have ANY standing water!
If I may, I'd like to conclude that I understand fully that concrete is porous, grading is key, and the only way to know for sure is to rip out more drywall.
I'm only asking for experienced guys who have dealt with situations like mine and what would you tell me to do if I was your son?
I put a fan in the room to dry that water before it runs behind the other wall and into the next room BUT I didn't fire it yet because I wanted to see if the downspout extension and sump pump extensions did the trick.
I didn't think I'd need to do that as the water was standing yet still not against the wall except for at that well and that's NOT where any water seeped in at, weird right?
My only other theory is if is not an overwhelmed drain tile because the standing water and over saturated ground soil outside the area in question, would the subsurface water be leaching down, going a little across and through the seal that's around the sewer main and seeping in through there, behind drywall and running over to the area that exposes it?
If you're still reading this I'm shaking the hell out of your hand in appreciation I know this was the longest (crap) show ever.
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