Basement Repair and Waterproofing | Why Overflow Systems Fail at Keeping You Dry?

I'm Peter O'Shea owner of American dry basement systems we're here on location in White Plains New York and what we're going to be doing today is we're tearing out a waterproofing system that a customer's spent a whole lot of money on just a couple of years ago that wasn't the right system for this particular type of foundation [Music] okay we're here in the basement in White Plains and we have what we call a box system there's a couple of different systems they're very similar they manage the water in the same spot and that's key to how dry you're going to get your basement you want to make sure you're managing the water within a depth of your footing and not within the depth of the floor this is one of the systems that manages water within the depth of the floor which means the water's got to rise up underneath the floor surround the entire floor and it's kind of an overflow system where this track is gonna go all the way around to a pump but the whole floor is sitting in water while this is going on if you could drop where your drainage is down 10 to 12 inches below that that whole area underneath your floor stays dry your floor is dry and if you get your floor dry and manage any water coming in underneath the wall you get a dry basement as we turn this system out you're going to notice we're gonna run into a couple of these rectangular spots here they're clean outs because these systems don't have any pitch to them when water comes up and then recedes back down when it hasn't rained for a week or so a little bit of water gets trapped in there and it grows all kinds of mold and fungus and mildew so they have these clean outs in here that give access to their system that they have to put in like a power washer and blow out all the junk that grows and collects inside of here this is going to manage the water within the depth of the floor which means water is going to rise up hit the bottom of the floor slide over to where the drainage is and the whole floor sits in water anytime these systems actually allow water to get to the pump then a week goes by and water recedes back down away and then we're back to where that last little bit of water sits in here and grows all kinds of fungus mold and bacteria and things like that [Music] okay when you're waterproofing a basement the idea is to get the right drainage in the right place this is the wrong drainage in the wrong place and also it's the wrong system anytime you remove part of a basement floor when you put the concrete back building code states that you got to put back a minimum of three and a half inches if you look here we've gotten back well that's less than an inch out to about approximately in and that's pretty much the same all the way as we go across here and remove all of this concrete it's all about an inch that's a code violation now as we put our system back in we're gonna put the right amount of drainage in we're gonna get down low enough below the floor so the whole floor is going to get dry but when we replace this concrete we're gonna use our proprietary super Krete product we're gonna go to the full three and a half inches to four inches of concrete our super Krete concrete's gonna actually grow back into the main body of the floor and give back a ton of the structural integrity that's been taken away with this type of system for this particular type of foundation we have our clean-out and then this board here it's kind of it's like cardboard kind of stuff you can see it's flimsy it actually is it's it's like a cardboard stuff and if you look that's supposed to allow the water to drain from the wall over into the gutter which is just below it and it comes right up when working at this for about two minutes and we already have 15 feet of the system broken up and torn out now look if you can see here's the top of the floor this is the initial tear out here's the top of the floor there's their drainage so the water's got to fill up to here and you can tell by the discoloration if you look right here over here you see a little bit stones dry you see here the stone is wet that stone is wet because the water has to fill up that high inside here and I'll show you a little bit more as we dig down in but it's the wrong place to manage the water matters if you had your water level the bottom of where you drain the water 10 to 12 inches below this the whole area between here and the bottom of your drain would be dry that would give you a dry floor the amount of work it takes to install this is so minimal and they charge a ton of money in order to do it you actually could get real drainage a real waterproofing system in for what they charge for these type of systems it's it's it's when you see the difference between the two and they're about the same amount of money you're gonna think man oh man I hope I get to see America dry basement systems before I enter it ever end up getting stuck with a system like this now watch watch how this system comes out okay these are oftentimes portrayed to have a pitch on them and you can see there's virtually no pitch on this whatsoever and whenever we're tearing these out we always bring a level and then we throw a level right on top now if you look to where the bubble is it's actually got a reverse pitch on it we're the farthest point away from where the pump is in other words this should be the height part if you're pitching something to a pump the furthest away should be where the high part of the pitch is this is actually level 2 actually a little bit of a reverse pitch where it's going away and instead of going to now if you can see as this comes out they don't want cross contamination that's why they have a divider in here it keeps the this supposedly this half only gets water coming up underneath the floor and then this half only gets water coming in from underneath the wall they talk about cross contamination has to do with iron ochre which happens underneath the floor and if it clogged it would only clog one half of this particular type of system it's that strictly a falsehood whenever you're getting water up underneath the floor they're both mixed and if you're going to get iron ochre it's because you have a system that's not pitched that there's no flow to wash out anything that would be inside of it that's why they have a maintenance program where you have to pay to have these particular types of systems flushed out so if you look here the water has to get in this one has she Oh check it out you can see that's the water level and it hasn't rained in hasn't rained in two weeks but this still you can see where all the water is it's managing the water right there even though the waters been subsiding where you manage the water is crucial to getting your basement to dry as possible we just pulled away some of the stone in the area just reefs at rated and filled up with water and it's right at the floor level that's definitely not where you want to manage the water there's a much more effective way if you manage the water 10 to 12 inches below where this does it will never come in contact with your floor and if it doesn't come in contact with your floor your floor's not X or B water in it having it evaporate out into your basement creating mold and different things like that this is the wrong type of system for this particular type of foundation we came across where we have these these connector pieces and then there's one small piece this is a whole section about a foot long you can see where they well I don't know what the deal is here whether where they've cut through it and they the odds and ends and pieces where this is a short piece and then had another cap on top of that I guess to fit them all together and then the regular system started again here no here's it there's another piece like this I guess that was to go around to go around the pipe yeah and then another piece here yeah it's all hotspots together it's little pieces it's kind of a Lego block system thing here and then it and then it has this I mean as flimsy as any what - supposedly want this to be doing as being like a drain board or a flow channel we'll show you when we put our super dry system in exactly how real drain board real flow channel works but this stuff is so flimsy it's like it's literally a cardboard and you can see and it just tears right up like that and they're charging an enormous amount of money for it what do you see the difference with the super toy system you see and the stones all wet you see down here that's the stones all wet right there I have to pull this channel because if I'd if I get it all in one piece but the the materials they use they're so flimsy that they tear apart just trying to lift the thing out okay so I'm going to pull the stone off of this so we can see where the drainage is again and we're gonna throw the level on it and see if we're starting to get a pitch or not well it's right there so I'm not too optimistic about there being any kind of pitch and we'll see well it's we're right there the bubbles right in the middle again let's see how they handle this sore line they come up to the sewer line Wow look they don't even continue the the system doesn't continue look at this and they cut it out it's filled with stone okay we've periodically have taken measurements to see how level it is we're about 20 25 feet away from where the high spot should be working our way around to where that the sump pump is and we put this on just dropped it right down nothing else other than just taking the stone to see the drainage itself and the bubble is dead center in the middle of here so there's no pitch and we're 25 feet around and the reason I'm making a point of this is that notoriously these things are portrayed as having some sort of pitch to them and there's just not okay let's take a look at how this great system was set up we're gonna be tearing it out now we've broke up around the floor and we'll pull some of the stones out here it's been moved around a hair here but it's pretty much that's where that's where it was so it's not really a test I guess the idea is that this fills up overflows and runs down on top of the grate and then I guess gets into the mist into the system now what we're gonna do is we're going to be putting a five-inch wide grate much deeper that that's a way more effective and how we tie it in to our drainage which is gonna be going through here our drainage is gonna be about this wide and about that deep cutting across hole this whole area with a five-inch grade so they're great comes down here and it from both ends drains down in and then comes through this little hole here once again it's that Lego blocks kind of approach to things here it seems quite flimsy on on how this thing was put together that would clog it I think it would be incredibly easy to clog that this little drain which goes down into here that's the only access for the water coming across that whole step to get down into the into the system I think another one of the reasons that the customer was tired of water all over the place and and he's now getting a real waterproofing system installed what we found here is that that the Box system is stays flush with the wall goes behind the hot water tank but they came out with their the cardboard drain board and if you look over here what they did was they brought it up a couple inches in case this ever failed that the water would come and then go back down into here but if you take a close look right over here this doesn't work this actually holds water in it doesn't allow water to pass through it readily you can tell by the grooves here these fit exactly and so you have a tight tight fit that actually would hold the water up in here and as it got high with just overflow and go back on so would defeat the purpose it wouldn't do anything to contain the water if you did have a hot water tank go out you're going to lose 40 or 50 gallons this is probably a 50 gallon tank if you look here you can see it's a real nice tight fit we're going to take a look at what there some stations set up is it's a much smaller version than what we do with our super dry system and then good no matter how good your drainage system is you're only as good as your your pump station setup again your substation is that is the the heart of your waterproofing system it should be set up correctly with the pump at the right level this is way high for any type of so we say high-volume system this is a really low volume system it's kind of a small little box about the size of a milk crate would be whereas the proper pump station would be significantly bigger create kind of a stone field around it which would pull water significantly from all directions in and really take a lot of the heat off of any any water building up underneath your floor set up correctly with the right drainage system you're also going to be able to address the false water table on the outside that builds up in your backfill area around your foundation if you have the right training system you're going to drop that water table that builds up on the outside of your walls and if you can keep that manage down low you've solved your entire problem this is an overflow system where only after a lot of pressure is built up on the outside of your walls water filling up in that backfill around your whole your whole basement on the outside pushing on the walls and going down and coming up underneath your floor this is just catching it this close to coming on top of your floor and apparently this system was on a regular basis getting overwhelmed in the basement was flooded that's why they called us into and saw our super dry system to completely alleviate all that so they won't have that problem anymore but we address that false water table that's the entire reason that basements blood [Music] see it's like a Legos and where you look here here's a bad system with a bad installation on top of it it's not like we filled it up it's this is completely jammed this is first time this has ever been brought out completely filled with junk and then you have a basket which I guess folds up has two parts to it and the only access point is for that for that box system is right here it's the two pieces of this that we're sitting like this and like that you have I don't know just these odd pieces that were thrown in here not sure what that is I know these are clean outs that usually go around the corner or somewhere that an assistant for when they want to flush these systems out because they clogged all the time so you have basically just two corners that they throw in there and Phil stone around them in order and then throw their their pump in the center of it I mean there's several things wrong with this type of obses tup how you manage the water which way the wood is coming from and just the size of it in general really is lacking we're finishing up here in White Plains New York and I think I speak for everybody after watching this video and if you do have water in your basement this is something you don't want to do twice if you've enjoyed our video I hope you have give us a like and also subscribe and if you click the bell icon it'll alert you to the next time that we have a video coming out so until then have a dry basement

Channel: American Dry Basement Systems

Views: 112,692

Keywords: Basement Repair, American Dry Basement Systems, Peter O'Shea, basement waterproofing, sump pump installation, foundation crack repair, basement waterproofers, basement waterproofing installers, sump pump installers, contractors, basement repair cost, basement repair and waterproofing, gratedrain, repair basement concrete floor, basement repair near me

Id: 6h1pUyQGt0g

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 04 2020