I bought my house in suburban chicago 8 years ago and have had ongoing water issues. First were some cracks in the basement walls, those have been fixed)..now I find I have a little bit of water coming up through some floor cracks and what appears to be water slowly coming in at the cove joint. I also seem to have a little water coming from the base plate of an interior wall (could the nails in the 2x4 base plate have cracked the concrete to allow for water to come up?)

Anyway, the back yard slopes to the house, where the previous owner put in a modified french drain. I say modified because it is only a foot away from the foundation wall, only goes 1 ft deep, and travels about 35 ft to a sump pump, which pumps the water out to the front yard (where it slopes away from the house).

If I dig the trench deeper, say 2 - 2 1/2 feet, will that be enough to alleviate those cove joint issues? I hate the idea of a sump pump outside (we lost power one storm and was screwed), but at this point, it seems to be my best option. The foundation is about 4, maybe 5 feet deep.

Thanks

First, please explain how the cracks in the basement wall were "fixed". It is possible they were not "fixed" at all.

Second, a "french drain" one foot deep isn't very "french"...the drain should be at the footing level of the foundation.

My guess is that the cracks in the foundation were never fixed in the only place that they can be fixed, and that is on the outside, and that water is still entering your foundation wall, running down inside the block cores, assuming the walls are block, and entering at the cove joint and through cracks in your floor.

The foundation walls are poured cement...the 2 cracks I had in the wall were both first fixed in the inside (company injected epoxy through some ports and then covered the whole thing with a hard epoxy resin), then both were dug on the outside and they filled the hole with some clay looking powder and then covered the last 6 inches or so with dirt. I was told the powder would form an impenetrable barrier when it got wet, so those two things combined should take care of the crack.

I guess I could just call it a trench...its only a foot away from the side of the house and the 2nd floor hangs over it (its a split-level house) so the amount of headroom from the overhang to the dirt is only about 4 ft. so I'll probably end up doing most of the digging by hand (trowel and post hole digger)...just wondering if it is even worth it for me to go another ft or 2...I'd havve to dig up the pipe, gravel, 1" rocks etc, and also try and lower the pit the sump pump is in

I'm hoping the only reason we got water in is the 7 inches of rain that fell on saturday...flooded a lot of chicagoland neighborhoods...guess I shouldn't complain about a little water.