The pitch on your pipe to the ditch is plenty...it's over 1%, which is quite adequate.

I'd like to help with the design of your new patio, but there are way too many unknowns. I can tell you that the new concrete slab should not be carried on the existing foundation. It is supported by the soil beneath it, which meqns that if you raise the level of the soil in that area, the fill should be compacted carefully, best with a vibratory compactor in lifts not exceeding 6 inches.

The only new foundation you'll need would be along side any edge of the slab which isn't against existing foundation, and it should be similar to your existing foundation in design and depth. All foundations should be in place before you pour the slab.

If the space is 20x20 and will become a room in the future, some thought should be given now, before you build anything, to the roof structure and how it will span the 20-foot distance.

If the patio will indeed become a future room, if you pour it at the exact same level as the house floor, then I wouldn't slope it at all. You don't want to have a room with a sloping floor.

One more thing to consider in my $190/foot quote for exterior waterproofing. I live in the midwest where we had those awful floods in early June. These guys are certainly not lacking for work. They are already scheduling out into late fall or winter, so I think there is certainly a supply and demand imbalance for their work because of the floods which is also likely increasing prices.

JG7 - I had the same kind of absurd quotes for my water infiltration problem. In the end, I did my own research to get informed, worked with a consultant to diagnose the problem, then hired a general contractor with experience in foundation work to do the job according to my specific instructions for a fraction of the price, about $50/foot.

LicWtrPfR:

Thanks for the voice of reason here. So many shills, so little time to shoot them all.


And to you poor suckers out there:

I've had an interior french drain installed, and had to have it "repaired" frequently. In my experience, they create more problems then they solve. My verdict: complete waste of time. Only use when everything else has been tried and things are still wet, like if your house is built on a swamp and water is seeping up from the floor.

Gotta tell everyone, don't act before you've read a lot from everywhere about water remediation. Do NOT call a waterproofing contractor first! Some of these guys are trained in assertiveness and will convince you they have the answer, no matter what your real problem is. Do yourself a favor: spend the money to hire an experienced Professional Engineering firm first to advise you, and have THEM write a remediation plan for the problem. It might take a site survey and soil core samples. Some contractors will tell you that PE firms are idiots! Hah! You hear that then show them the door.

Any reputable contractor can't be scared by the truth, and some in my area are happy to work with PE firms to spec. Usually they are the contractors who already do commercial work as well, so they are used to the PE way of thinking. Those are the guys you want.

After twenty years of being being hijacked by "waterproofer experts" anxious to separate me from my cash, I'm finally taking my own advice and am doing the PE thing. Every time I tell a contractor that I've got to check out his solution with my PE firm, they go all blank and limp, then start spewing something about dumb az college boys. Yikes, that alone was worth the price. Usually they never call back.

Still looking for a contractor who can dig a trench in NJ for less than the cost of a Lexus. Sure, we all have to eat. But people have been trenching for a very long time now and the technology is well known, so it shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg to do it.

I've had many, many contractors come price exterior drains, and many are pricing my job upwards of $30,000! That for digging a trench on three walls, laying PVC pipe, adding some gravel to cover the pipe, painting some tar on the walls, adding membrane, and back-filling with the same clay-garbage soil they pulled out in the first place! BS guaranteed! You want to know what PVC pipe costs, then check HD because that's where they get it. Tar and polyfilm, too. And yeah, "elastomeric membrane" sounds really high tech and expensive, but when you check it out, it ain't all that and it is not that expensive. Biggest corner to be cut will be the back fill because the proper replacement back fill is relatively expensive and you need truck loads of it to do the job right. Watch 'em on that score.

My take -- the waterproofing industry is filled with scams. Check the BBB and see the complaints, complaints, complaints. Where there is smoke, there is fire. Watch out, hucksters are everywhere and your pain is just part of the cost of doing business. The best defense isn't that bogus guarantee, it's knowledge of the problem and an independent voice to help you solve it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nano Fish,

Hi I live in New England and just bought a house 2 years ago- cement foundation, cement floor. I get water usually once or twice each early spring.

From what I can tell, the water is coming in from the ground. I also noticed that water was collecting in the bottom of my chimeny sometimes up to 10" of water inside it. The chimeny is in the middle of the basement, not against an outside wall. After the rain would stop, I would remove the water from the bottom of the chimeny. Even though the rain long since stopped, after a few hours, the water would come back up. The water would seep out of the chimeny and puddle on the floor. There are also other areas where the previous owner must have dug up and re-cemented the floor, where water comes from the ground and collects in puddles. I don't recall getting water any other time other than rain/snow storms in late winter/early spring. We have had some pretty heavy rainstorms other times of the year and the basement has stayed dry.

What would be the best way to go about fixing this? Thanks in advance for your help. Let me know if you need any more information.

How old is the house, and what kind of basement walls does it have? What is the prevalent soil type in your area? What is the topography like in your area?

The house is almost 60 years old, the walls are poured concrete. It is on a flat level lot with a small wooded area between a small hill which is about 200 yards away. I'm not sure what you mean by soil type, but I have noticed a fine sand that collects in the basement carpet when water comes up from the floor.

Sixty years old is about the time when the world was discovering vapor retarders under floor slabs, and well-constructed slabs. Your floor may or may not be a full 4-inch thickness of concrete, and it may or may not have a vapor retarder under the slab. The vapor retarder will not necessarily keep water from penetrating a floor, but a full 4 inch thickness of 3000 psi concrete probably will. A two-inch thick concrete floor made of concrete of indeterminate strength, common in older homes, probably won't.

Does water only appear in the area of the chimney? Oh, I see that it does not. If the previous owner "dug up part of the floor", that suggests a thin floor, and water entering in a few places through the floor suggests but does not prove that the source of water is under the floor. The walls being concrete rather than block also suggests that the walls are not the source of the water. However, you may want to check your walls for rod holes that may be leaking water into the basement.

It is possible that removing the entire floor, digging down a few inches, and placing at least 4 inches of crushed stone or gravel, a vapor retarder, and a 4-inch concrete floor slab might cure your problems. While the floor is open, you may want to consider a sump pit and sump pump, where water can flow through the stone under your slab and find its way to the sump. Or, you may want to consider an interior drainage system under your new floor to do that job.

Richard

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Hetzel:
The pitch on your pipe to the ditch is plenty...it's over 1%, which is quite adequate.

I'd like to help with the design of your new patio, but there are way too many unknowns. I can tell you that the new concrete slab should not be carried on the existing foundation. It is supported by the soil beneath it, which meqns that if you raise the level of the soil in that area, the fill should be compacted carefully, best with a vibratory compactor in lifts not exceeding 6 inches.

The only new foundation you'll need would be along side any edge of the slab which isn't against existing foundation, and it should be similar to your existing foundation in design and depth. All foundations should be in place before you pour the slab.

If the space is 20x20 and will become a room in the future, some thought should be given now, before you build anything, to the roof structure and how it will span the 20-foot distance.

If the patio will indeed become a future room, if you pour it at the exact same level as the house floor, then I wouldn't slope it at all. You don't want to have a room with a sloping floor.

Thanks for the reply. What I had pictured is basically an elevated concrete box. I would excavate with a backhoe a trench approx. 2 foot wide 20 foot out from the house, 20 foot across the end and 20 foot back to the house, the same depth as the houses footer. (3 sides, the fourth side would be the house's block foundation) Then form and pour footer and walls to same height as floor of house, minus 4? inches for thickness of the concrete pad. Waterproof and backfill around the outside with washed pea gravel. (also lay footer tile and tie into my new tile I'm installing around the house.) The inside of this box would be filled with compacted limestone (#44's mill run/berm). My concern is whether or not the foundation walls (particularly the block foundation of the house) will withstand the additional pressure from the foot and a half of compacted stone pressing against them. This is why I proposed a 4th wall poured against the the house's foundation and reinforced with heavy re-bar for added strength.

I hadn't planned on raising the grade around the outside of the new patio, except for maybe a couple of inches of fall away from the foundation for runoff.

I may end up hiring the wall pour due to not having access to forms.

A few other concerns...

- how long to wait after pouring walls before backfilling/compacting in and out

- future settling of stone inside of the patio foundation causing the pad to crack and sink toward center

- how the new walls should be tied into existing block foundation


As far as the roof, I had planned to come off with a separate peak/gable, probably with cathedral ceiling. Oh, and thanks for the tip on the sloping floor. I had planned on keeping it very minor and hopefully unnoticeable, but your probably right about keeping it level. I hope to do the room next summer anyway.

Do you know the thickness of the existing block foundation? And what is the dimension between the outside grade now and the basement floor? Those two factors will determine whether the wall can support more earth outside of it. Also, which direction are the existing floor joists? Perpendicular to that existing wall, or parallel with it?

If you remove the top soil and any other organic materials that may lie under your new floor, and compact the new fill carefully, there should be no cracking and settling of the concrete slab, as long as it does not rest on any walls.

quote:

Richard

The joists run perpendicular. I'll do some measuring to determine wall thickness and floor to grade info... if I were to guess I'd say wall thickness 8" at least, outside grade to dirt floor in crawlspace 1 1/2' to 2' but I'll check to be sure and get back to you.

It seems the slab would have to rest on the 3 new foundation walls. Do you suggest instead, to pour the new foundation walls to the same level as the floor, leave the compacted fill 4 inches lower inside, and pour a sort of "floating" pad inside? If so, would I need to use some sort of expansion material between the floor and walls, and would rainwater/freeze and thaw become a problem this winter before I can get a roof on.

Eight-inch walls can support up to about 5 feet of earth outside them, so you should have no problem, and the extra wall won't be necessary. If it's going to ultimately be a room, then the top of the foundation should be the same as the top of the slab, and a joint filler should be placed between the slab edge and all walls. If the slab were to bear on the walls, you would need some very careful engineering and reinforcing to avoid cracking, and the slab would have to be gently thickened at those edges. going from 4 inches to 8 inches over a distance of about 4 feet...then it might not crack.

http://www.gthree.net/dry_basements

2 pictures...
Pic 1 "When I took this photo, this basement had a waterproofing-system that, as it turned out, was actually the main source of their water problem. I removed the system,plugged the holes in the floor and walls left by it and sanitized the floor and walls from all the mold caused by it"

Pic 2 "The waterproofing-system was on two walls. You can see the plastic panels at the bottom of the walls. Water is meant to collect between the panels and wall, then drain into a pipe beneath the floor. Primarily, its the panels that cause the mold to proliferate and enter the home`s environment. I can think of no better way to poison a home`s indoor air..."

"I don`t mince words:
I don`t believe in "aftermarket" waterproofing-systems for several reasons:
* they don`t address the problem
* they only deal with the symptoms
* they are not approved by building code councils or environmental organizations, which is very important because they can affect both the STRUCTURAL integrity of your home and INCREASE MOLD levels SUBSTANTIALLY, causing an unhealthy indoor environment...
* they`re very expensive
* there are ALOT of fly-by-not companies out there providing this service

'SOME' good points, scroll down and click LAST LINK.....
5 STEPS to a Dry Basement http://www.google.com/search?sa=N&tab=nw&q=crawlspace%20complaint

82 Part III Sound Advice...2nd paragraph
"there is a common piece of advice going around that I believe was initiated largely by home inspectors. That is that raising the grade etc...can effectively alleviate basement seepage. The problem with this remedy is that its not specific enough...this generic warning takes focus away from the SPECIFIC problem areas"

-Interior Sealers
apply all the inside junk ya like, when water is entering from the outside you need to STOP it,remedy it from the outside.

-Misconceptions
Like roof leaks, dealing with basement seepage is about education and TAKING the TIME....to locate/determine how-where water is first entering.

Hmm, education. Who has more hands-on experience with zero complaints than Capizzo and a handful of others? NOBODY. Not an engineer,not a city/home inspector etc....this is simply the truth.

-Aftermarket Water Systems
The array of systems includes....
* Plastic panels against interior basement walls combined with drain lines (tiles) under floor...
* Drain lines alone buried beneath the basement floor near outside walls
* Trenches filled with gravel beneath the basement floor...
* And every combination of the above
Some are referred to as "French drains". A sump, or basin, with a pump is often included..

Posted many other links, factual freakin` links,not the blccht inside-system storytellers

Read what John M tries to warn people about http://www.e-o-f.com/foundation.html#SCAMS

http://www.e-o-f.com/foundation.html

You can raise and slope the dumb GRADE all you like, it cannot and does not DETERMINE/diagnose how-where the water is entering, it doesn`t repair/fix squat! Never has. So heads up to anyone who doesn`t help people locate their actual problem(s) and who recommends and tells people CRAP like raising and sloping the grade SOLVES 90% of all basement leaks, incompetent statements like that.

Next time some nitwit inside-system salesperson tells you TAR won`t work,doesn`t last long and other lies, kick `em in the behind and tell them to go learn something for once, J Kristmas....incompetent!

When TAR is applied correctly and protected, and we don`t mean damproofing, it`ll last plenty long enough,especially when any cracks etc are first sealed w/hydraulic cement and hole is backfilled w/gravel.

-TAR was used as Waterproofing material by 3,500 yr old Mexican civilization http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/tar-was-...zation_10085444.html

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20080818/981/tsc-tar-was-u...proofing-materi.html

-EFFLORESCENCE http://www.aggregateresearch.com/forum/viewmessage.aspx?AreaID=82&MID=2360
"Water infiltrates the blocks and dissolves minerals...as water evaporates from the surface of the unit the mineral deposits are left behind, thus efflorescence crystals can grow.Although generally a visual problem, if the efflorescence crystals grow INSIDE the surface of the unit, it can cause spalling"

"The BEST way to PREVENT the problem is to prevent water from infiltrating the blocks (CANNOT do this from the inside of a basement! Inside systems do NOT stop-prevent water from infiltrating basement walls)....whenever we see this problem, there is usually a leak somewhere that allows water to ENTER the block wall....once the SOURCE of the WATER-INFILTRATION has been LOCATED and STOPPED, the walls can be cleaned...."

-EFFLORESCENCE
http://www.masonryinstitute.org/pdf/612.pdf
....."Prevent any water from penetrating INTO the masonry wall.....Salt laden SOILS could be backfilled against a wall where the salts could be absorbed and cause efflorescence"

LicensedWaterproofR, I am currently a subcontractor for an inside company who wants to start up on my own. Reading this post has shined new light on the subject for me as until I came across this thread I thought inside jobs were the way to go.

I would much rather provide a solution that works than a hack job. My question is, how thick should the tar be applied, and is there an adhesive that needs to be used for the 6 mil visqueen or does the tar act as adhesive? How far out from the foundation do you dig? Is an inside system ever advisable?

I'm looking to do it right and am in a good market to provide proper solutions. My area is saturated with inside companies.

Thanks in advance for any reply.

Rangermatt

Tell ya again for the zillionth dang time, people are getting blcchtt`d into spending $40,00-$60,000 on UNNECESSARY PIERS etc from INSIDE-Waterdiverting cheats, least here in MI they most certainly are. Wake up people will ya please, J Krsitmas!

HO in GPW just bought house,built in 60`s/block/clay `n roots, within last 3 months(very little RAIN-MAN!) several crack occurred. HO calls 3 inside scammers.ALL 3 try `n BS them and tell em the reason the cracks occurred recently has NOTHING to do with 'weather'or clay or roots or a porch-footing which is right against back wall where 2 cracks are.These NITWITS tell HO the house is settling and need piers and an inside-system, costs between $40,000-60,000....no chtt.

There is NO SETTLING of the house,NO cracked-dropped footing(s)....no! Piers won`t do JACK CHTT. PIERS won`t remove the expanding/contracting clay soil OR roots OR porch-footing which is right-against the stupid basement walls which has clearly CAUSED the dumb cracks.QUIT blindly believing these fraudulent self-proclaimed foundation experts....CHTT! They are experts at trying to screw you outta your MONEY, thats about it.

NO cracks in basement floor, floor hasn`t dropped etc,NO cracks problems in bricks and even IF there was it often does NOT mean you have any settling issues.

There`s no mystery how these inside-MISFITS get a TON of money to continue the onslaught of TV-radio commercials.....CHEATING YOU out of many thousands, thats the G DANG TRUTH

It took 3 weeks just to think up all that?

What does all that jibberish mean reqarding the questions asked? - Just diarhea of the mouse/mouth. No wonder people avoid this thread, except how to not do it right.

quote:

Originally posted by concretemasonry:
It took 3 weeks just to think up all that?

What does all that jibberish mean reqarding the questions asked? - Just diarhea of the mouse/mouth. No wonder people avoid this thread, except how to not do it right.

Your a loser Brewster, at the very least on THIS subject. Avoid this thread? You better check and see how many hits the thread has. Go post and try `n help others on something your good at.I`ll reply when and to whom i choose

quote:

Originally posted by rangermatt:
LicensedWaterproofR, I am currently a subcontractor for an inside company who wants to start up on my own. Reading this post has shined new light on the subject for me as until I came across this thread I thought inside jobs were the way to go.

I would much rather provide a solution that works than a hack job. My question is, how thick should the tar be applied, and is there an adhesive that needs to be used for the 6 mil visqueen or does the tar act as adhesive? How far out from the foundation do you dig? Is an inside system ever advisable?

I'm looking to do it right and am in a good market to provide proper solutions. My area is saturated with inside companies.

Thanks in advance for any reply.

Rangermatt

Its all within this thread Ranger. Maybe go back a little and see pictures that have been posted,should answer your Q`s.