Who would be the best person to contact about repairing and waterproofing a foundation wall on an exisiting home? Approximately, how much should such a repair cost?

You need to find a foundation repair contractor who will diagnose the problem before suggesting a solution.

You give us no idea at all of the type of repair needed, nor the type and extent of the problems. Therefore, it's impossible to quote any cost figures at all. Costs can also vary widely from region to region.

Our home is a high ranch on the north shore of Long Island. The area is heavily treed and the soil is largely clay. We have been in our home for 8 years and about four years ago the heater room in our basement started flooding. We noticed that when the leaking occurred there would be a large pooling of water that would develop on our front side lawn. We first tried leading water away and finally opted to install the BeDry system. We had it put inside along the heater room wall up to the water heater & furnace. The problem seemed solved with one exception three years ago when we had had 8 consecutive days of rain. Rain water no longer pooled on the lawn and apart from that one time we no longer had a waterprom. We thought the problem was solved. However, this past January we noticed a leak had developed along the wall by the base of the chimney into our family room adjacent to the heater room along the same wall.. We’ve since had several similar instances during heavy rains. We tried to offset the outside grading by setting up some plastic pipes to draw water away. We thought perhaps the water was coming from being dumped over the gutters down into the ground below. We thought perhaps we needed to install a pump at the end of our BeDry system. However, when we tried the hose test the water came through so now we’re suspecting there may be a crack in the foundation. We are having 6 inch gutters installed and plan to do regrading but we are unclear as to which to take care of first… regrading or checking for cracks and taking care of that .We have lined up a landscaper for the regrading but are unsure who we would need to contact for repairing the foundation and waterproofing I and are curious as to how much we might need to pay for it. I’ve included a lot of detail so that you might answer our initial question and perhaps offer some other insight into our problem. Thanks.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: brunario,

The cost depends on how much of the wall they have to excavate.

Regrading and oversize gutters are probably not going to solve the problem, which is cause by water which is already in the ground, not the water that's above ground. You may want to do those for cosmetic reasons though.

I would look for an excavating contractor or a masonry contractor to do the work, if you can't find anyone but the inside-system thieves under "foundation repair contractors". The reason there aren't dozens of people willing to do such work is that it's wicked back-breaking and somewhat dangerous work. Read through the posts here by LicensedWaterproofR, who describes the methods for repair and waterproofing quite clearly, and be certain your contractor will do something very similar.

We had a waterproofing company come in & look at the problem. They noticed an outside crack along the the chimney where we have the leak. They will excavate down to the footing, chip out the crack, recement with waterproof cement. They will then put on foundation coal tar & finish with Volclay panels (a Bentonite geotextile waterproofing product) fastened to the foundation from footing to soil grade. What are your thoughts on their proposal?