If the wall in my basement is leaking very slightly, is the main/only solution to the actual water issue to add grading outside? What else?
It is under a deck, which I can rip up a bit and fill with dirt, but is that likely to solve it?
We noticed from slightly bubbling paint and efflorescence.
I’m dealing with this right now. There’s a few things I’m doing:
- Going to be adding dirt around the house to improve the gradient
- Adding longer gutter drain ramps so water is deposited further away
- Filling in cracks with quick-dry cement
I’ve been doing the last one thinking it would be simple to just clear the cracks, but it just redirected the water around. Definitely fix the actual drainage problem first.
Grading is not your only solution but it is the only economical option with a great success rate. You very quickly dive into catastrophic costs when upgrading to a French drain or coating the exterior of the basement wall.
I’ve had the issue you’re describing and solved it both times by adding fill dirt at the wall, grading the pitch away and laying heavy mil plastic that I tucked and fastened under the deck’s ledger board. I was able to work under one deck but for the other, I disassembled it then put it back together when finished.
If you want solutions that don’t involve digging up the outside, sealing the wall, and adding proper drainage to direct the water away, you’ll probably need to say more about how the wall is constructed and what sort of drainage currently exists.
Do you have a sump pump? What is the wall constructed of (concrete, cinder block, stone, brick, etc)? Is the basement finished?
Are there any downspouts that might be draining near the foundation? Water can travel a long way. Also, are the gutters over the deck overflowing when it rains?
If you are tight on cash, a dehumidifier might do a decent job at lessening the damage for a couple of years.
You might need to improve the waterproofing along the wall. Really the best way to be confident in a fix is bringing in a qualified engineer to find the source and recommend a solution, but that’s also the most expensive solution.
The proper solution to water in the basement usually starts from the top down and increases in price the further you go down. The first thing you should be looking at is whether your roof and gutters are functioning properly and discharging all the water from your roof as far away from the foundation as possible, and whether the slope around those points where your roof’s water is discharging properly slopes away from the house as it needs to. Leaky, clogged, overflowing, or nonexistent gutters can be way more problematic to your basement than you realize, and they are stupidly cheap to fix compared to almost any other water-related problem. If they are not operating at 100%, do that first.
You can install drain tile outside to route water away from the house, but that depends on the rest of your property, and if you have anywhere to redirect the water to.
You can also dig out around that wall and apply a water sealant, or other water mitigation to the outside of the wall.
There are a few options, but most of them are going to require moving a lot of dirt.
As the other commenter said, water travels far and the route is rarely linear. If you can somehow be certain it’s rain water entering the basement, then at least you know the source. But if it’s a leaky pipe then it may have eroded a path underground which is now impacting your foundation.
I’m no expert. But it seems to me that adding any sort of soil or rock would only be a band-aid fix without patching the crack where water is entering. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but it seems logical.
Iirc, all basements leak if the ground is saturated. Basement walls are made if concrete or concrete block, which is porus. With enough water on one side, it will eventually start seeping through. This is why ground slope around the house is important, and adding soil and gravel is actually a ling term fix in most cases - as long as the water runs away from the house rather than pooling around it, it won’t saturate the ground and the basement won’t seep.
Caveat - I’m no expert. But friends had this problem, and proper drainage solved it
If you have brick or concrete down there, make sure the wall isn’t cracking in the wrong way
Is it better for the cracks to go side to side or up and down?
I have just heard that, for brick walls, stairstepping is really bad. Or cracks in a wall that connects to a crack in a floor.
