Why Basements Leak

Designed for Failure:

When builders build homes, they have a lot of things to put in the house and pay for. Given the choice of spending money on beautiful things like great cabinets and bathroom fixtures, or on the things that protect the house and make it last longer that a buyer won't see-- he goes for the beauty. Why? It's what people see and want. 

There are two things that keep a basement from leaking:

1- A coating on the basement walls

2- A proper drain around the bottom of the foundation- called a footing drain

Wall coatings can be inexpensive black tar coatings called "dampproofing." Dampproofing costs builders about 20 cents per square foot, or around $200 a home. Dampproofing doesn't bridge wall cracks, doesn't stop water completely, and doesn't last forever. Until about 1985, nearly all new homes were dampproofed. 

Even today, 85% of homes still only get their foundation walls dampproofed. A big step up from dampproofing is "waterproof" coatings. These will cost a builder from 60 cents per square foot to $1.25 per square foot, or $1000 or more per home. It often includes some kind of drainage board or protection board, such as foam, over them. Waterproofing will bridge most small wall cracks, and will last a lot longer than dampproofing. 

Footing drains are plastic pipes with holes or slots laid around the outside of the footing or at the bottom of the walls. A bed of crushed stone is installed around them and the soil around the outside of your home is pushed back over the drains. There are any things that can go wrong with a footing chain- especially since unskilled labor is often used to install them. 

Problems include:

- the drains don't lead out anywhere- fairly common

- the place they lead off to is blocked, clogged, or crushed- fairly common

- the drains clog as water washing through them brings silt and sediment (mud) with it- extremely common

- the drains have very little or no stone around them- stone is expensive

-the drains are not connected as a continuous loop or are installed too high

-etc. etc.

--An excerpt from Dry Basement Science written by Lawrence Janesky