Basement Waterproofing - Do's and Don'ts

[Music] okay we're setting up to put our drainage pipe in our stone in our flow channel and set it up and then re-cement everything with the right pitch to go around to our heavy-duty commercial pump station and pump that water up away from the house now you can see where we're going to be managing the water is about 10 to 12 inches below the bottom of the floor the system we're tearing out manages the water within the depth of the floor so the whole floor sits in water before any water actually travels through their waterproofing system so there's a probably around 20 times more drainage the way that we're going to do it but we're able to keep the structural integrity of the foundation intact where we are able to leave spacers here here and periodically around the entire foundation in order to install their system they remove that floor entirely off of the footing which takes that support away from the wall which holds the walls out those basically three big pieces of concrete you have your footing and your wall sits on top of the footing the floor is poured so it sits on the ledge of the footing and up against your wall and it holds your walls out you remove that you lose a lot of support holding those walls out and it has a tendency or lends itself to cracking of the walls when you get heavier storms water tables fill up on the outside of your wall and push on the wall okay so we have a whole bunch of drainage already set up ready to go in and now we're going to be taking out the uh system that was put in by another company a whole bunch of questions are brought up of why they installed it the way that they did and let me go through them with you normally you'd never stop a foot away from the end of of a wall we're running this whole length of the wall stopping here is not a good idea because the tricky part of drainage is usually in the corner so there's no reason not to put an extra two or three feet so we would come up to the wall finish this whole wall and then actually wrap the corner we call it wrapping the corner because once we do that and get enough drainage around the corner we've actually now tapped into the water that's building up on the outside of here and taking off a whole bunch more stress from that water that builds up out in the backfield area that false water table that we've talked about in so many of our videos the other thing too is if you notice here this system has been installed about two and a half to three inches out away from this wall there's a reason for that and it's not a great reason and actually it's probably the worst reason in the world this wall was finished it had drywall and or paneling the customer actually removed it prior to us coming out to put the waterproofing system in what this waterproofing company did probably one of the worst ideas in all of waterproofing is they took and they put their system right in front of a studded out wall here's where it really turns into a bad idea you put your drainage up in front of a studded out wall has insulation behind it water's got to travel underneath the wall across the floor across a kick plate to get down into their drainage mold needs lack of light lack of ventilation and an organic food source in order to grow nothing happens until you add one more ingredient and that's moisture or water we have moisture and water coming through enough that they put a waterproofing system in locked in behind the walls basically turning it into a mold furnace growing all kinds of crazy mold behind here because it's locked that moisture into lack of light lack of ventilation and an organic food source and then with a whole bunch of of moisture in and locked in so it can't even evaporate and dry out worst idea in the world easiest way for them to do it the waterproofing company with the minimal amount of work minimal amount of collateral damage but sometimes you have to explain to the customer the right way to do something you know you have to take some further measures in other words cutting the panel and cutting the drywall in order to expose the wall get rid of that dirty moldy drywall or or paneling and start fresh and then have a clean access which would allow us then to put this waterproofing system flush up against the wall they definitely put it in front of the studded out wall we have our fairing strips or studded strips out here and as we go down it's still out that two and a half to three inches and then it next back flush to the wall over here because there was no this wasn't finished there was no paneling or drywall here and then they have what these these things are called clean outs because there's no real pitch to these systems they need to be flushed out they grow bacteria called iron ochre and mold in them so there's a usually a maintenance contract where they want to flush it out once or twice a year the nice thing is it gives them a a second tier of revenue because they can keep coming back [Music] you can see where the drain is and you see i'm always about where your drainage is because that has everything to do with how dry you can get your basement look where this is i mean if i throw a level on this thing if you look at the pitch right here you'll see it's actually reverse pitch this end should be higher to have water flow through it that way so if i were to lift this up now the bubble comes into being just level even though i've raised this end up the way it's installed this actually has a pitch going away from where the pump is i'm going to pull this out now we're just going to see if if we do have any kind of moisture or even water underneath where this where the cutter is installed well you can see there's no stone underneath it it's not like the system's even been installed they put a little bit of stone on the outside of it but nothing at all underneath it just it's down to just that clay and it's all the clay is all wet so this whole area has to be completely filled with water before anything can get into their drainage system that's why these things fail all the time and we get called to tear them out and put new systems in real waterproofing systems in here's the thing all of the drainage comes across to here and it goes from that gutter system to something that doesn't have a bottom to it so this thing sits right here and if water were which it doesn't do as you can tell by the trench water's supposed to flow through here and then somehow get through this part that doesn't even have a bottom in around there to the other side and then all the way around to get over into the pump this is just not a waterproofing system these systems they look great and with the right marketing they sound fantastic and they're called like high tech and things like that take a look at it take it at face value if you take a look at the trench that we have going down here that's the only drainage you have and they charge you more than what i charge to give you this much drainage what american drive basement system charges for a system that doesn't have a chance of doing what they explain that it will do with these systems one of the tricky parts is corners uh you would think that they would just do like a 45 and put the two pieces together that would kind of facilitate a flow of water through it but they don't so let me show you what the bottoms in the corners look like we've torn so many of these out that we know exactly what we're going to find if we tear this out you're going to see this doesn't have a bottom that's the bottom of this right here this just sits on there like that that just enables them debris cement the floor back up that inch or so in order to keep the floor the continuity and levelness of the floor around so they're telling you it's a waterproofing system that has high-tech state-of-the-art effectiveness to carry water around your your foundation around your perimeter and the corners don't have bottoms oh yeah we removed that piece of floor that the other company left it in place it came off like butter as you saw there's a thing about wet cement and dry cement when they originally do your footing that's the first piece of the three pieces of of a traditional three-piece foundation so they allow that to cure it's got to be level the town will not let you build the house until they send their inspector out and signs off on it he does six to eight to ten different checks to make sure that your footing is absolutely level so if someone's telling you that one part of your your basement is higher than another part of your basement it has nothing to do with your footing so you have a perfectly level footing and then they come and they put forms up if you have a port concrete wall and they do it right in the middle of the footing most often sometimes it does shift a little bit one way or the other and then they pour the concrete into the forms allow it to harden to dry but when they do that it's the wet cement of the walls on top of the footing which is already dry when you put two concretes together one's dry and then another wet one on top of it and allow that one to dry it creates what we call a cold joint that cold joint is a seam that if you put water pressure on allows water to pass through it there's another set of cold joints when they pour the whole floor this was all one piece of floor in other words this goes right across here that other coal joint is when the water comes through this cold joint here there's another cold joint where that matches up and the water then comes this way and up and on top of your floor that's the way the water travels through your foundation to get up and to flood your basement the other problem we keep going back to is if you have your if you have your drainage in other words if this if they had done this gone the extra step then this this drain pipe would have been over and sat on top of the footing once again you're managing the water here completely within the depth of your floor wrong system for this particular type of foundation a traditional three piece poured foundation or a block foundation this is the wrong system for it you're never going to get the results that you want and in order to put this here when they put the concrete floor back this has to be three and a half inches that's one and three quarter inches so you're not even code compliant with this particular type of system but don't take my word for it call your building inspector get the stats from whoever's going to install the waterproofing system and find out how much floor they're going to put back you'll be surprised at the answers we just removed the discharge line my guy basically just took it pulled it and it snapped off he actually was trying to pull out where they sealed around it to have it all come out in one piece is what he actually expected but he realized that this is the cheapest type of pvc that you can buy it's not your schedule 40 what you should use for any type of plumbing that you're ever going to do in your house with sump pumps anything any kind of plumbing you're going to do you want to go with schedule 40. if you take a look at how skinny this is this is the most flimsy type of of pvc that you can use whereas you can see in comparison to a a schedule 40. the difference is uh you know it's almost double the strength as we work our way down here normally we would have left spacers here but because of the way that the other system has to be installed they had to remove that floor completely away from the wall they had the floor stay on the footing but then they created a gap where they had to put that gutter system in we had to remove the part that they left so that we could get right down to the footing where we need to be to put our drainage in and still enable us to put back the full thickness of the floor so as we work our way down here we can show you a couple other cool things about the benefits of our particular type of system if you can see our white pvc and that schedule 40 unlike the stuff that we've just replaced is within the trench so we're able to actually put a pump all the way on the other side of the basement run the discharge through the trench and bring it up and take it out where the discharges were with the other system which is actually a decent spot for the discharge being able to do that rather than running it across the ceiling where it's hooked up to your floor joists and every time the pump goes on you're going to get a little bit of vibration and shake and it goes right up through the rest of the house this is a completely silent uh great way in order to run a discharge line to get over and put our discharge line out through the foundation wall wherever we want it in this particular case we're going to be putting it out right out where the holes were already made and if you like the video hit the like button and subscribe so you can see all of our other videos too so until next time enjoy your dry basement [Music]

Channel: American Dry Basement Systems

Views: 171,692

Keywords: basement waterproofing, basement waterproofers, basement waterproofing systems, Basement waterproofing interior, American Dry Basement Systems, french drainage system, french drain, sump pump installation, wet basement repair, waterguard basement waterproofing system, basement waterproofing installers, sump pump installers, mold problems in basement, contractors, Peter OShea, home improvement, waterproofing your basement, Discharge pipe for sump pump

Id: FCP0Wd_7n5c

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021