How to Fix Basement Water Problems Yourself

so I want to do a general overview of a video that I did a while back and the topic of that video was how to control water problems on your property and the first thing that you want to look at when trying to control water on your property is how are you controlling the water coming off of your roof and when controlling water coming off your roof the first thing you want to look at is your gutters if you don't have gutters you definitely want to put them up because you're gonna be fighting a losing battle without them now with your gutters the main thing you want to look at is are they put in correctly you want to look for things like splash guards and valleys where there's going to be a high water flow where the water might overshoot the gutters and land on the ground then you also want to make sure that the gutters are sloped correctly for proper water drainage you also want to make sure that your gutters are clean and free of debris to allow the water to flow properly if all that is good and working correctly you want to make sure that you're carrying your water as far away from your house as possible with a drainage tile so here I have this downspout tied into a drainage tile that shoots all the way over here it meets up with that downspout then it goes around the house here it's that downspout right there's where my sump pit connects to my drainage tile comes all the way out here it's one more downspout then it shoots into a dry ditch on the back of my property here so right here is where the drainage tile ends and it shoots the water out into the ditch [Music] this ditch drains this whole woods and it is dry 95% of the time so over here you can see on the edge of the property the ditch is really flat and then kind of gets gradually deeper and deeper and deeper to where on the other side of my property over there it's about 25 feet deep if you're adequately controlling the water runoff from your roof and you're getting the water as far away from your house as possible whether it be to a drainage ditch or to a low spot in your yard or to a pop-up drain in the middle of your yard the next thing you're gonna want to look at is the grading of your property proper grading is gonna slope away from your house a general rule of thumb when it comes to grading is you want the first 10 feet away from your house to drop a minimum of 6 inches so when water hits the ground there it's gonna want to trickle away and now go towards your house if the grading slopes towards your house then you're going to be fighting a losing battle and you're going to want to get it as flat as you possibly can and if you can't do anything else with your grading there are options to where you can run a French drain along the perimeter so one of those things you can do is have a French drain system put in on the outside perimeter or the inside perimeter of your foundation wall or both what that consists of is a trench filled with pea gravel and perforated drainage tile that will drain water to a sump pit that can be pumped out what they'll do when putting in an interior French drain system is they'll cut the concrete back about 24 inches out dig down to get out all the dirt fill it with pea gravel and a perforated drainage tile then they'll put the concrete back in place then they will run the front strain to a some pit where the water can be pumped out I do have a French drain system in this house that was put in when the house is built and it's currently working great if you're not sure whether or not you have a French drain system in your sump it just look in the walls of the sump pit for drainage tiles coming in to the pit and if you have drainage tiles you know like four to six inches wide coming into your pit most likely you have a French drain system that is draining the entire perimeter of your foundation I did have a couple water issues with the house however that mostly had to do with just getting the water from my roof as far away from the house as possible and that solved most of them after I fixed the water runoff from the roof and got it as far away from the house as possible I did have a few nagging issues with the main one being right here there was a hairline crack that ran almost the whole length of the foundation wall and it would leak maybe once or twice a year and the amount of water would end up being about a puddle this big most times enough to be annoying so I tore out the wall and I got a chisel and I chiseled out a V groove in the concrete and then I filled it with hydraulic cement [Music] and that pretty much prevented it from leaking again it's been extremely wet the past couple weeks and I haven't had any water leak in what I'm also gonna do is paint this with drylock paint which is kind of like a waterproofing paint before I saw the wall back up just as a little extra insurance there's another video that I'm going to make on that and the link it will be in the video description so if you have any cracks or certain spots that are leaking in your foundation wall what it most likely is is a crack or a pinhole where the water is getting through what you're gonna want to do is just chisel it out fill it with hydraulic cement and it'll probably fix the issue in a past house I lived in I had a cinderblock wall foundation and what was happening there was the cinder blocks were actually filling up with water and it was slowly seeping out the bottom and causing water issues so I put the system in where you would go around the bottom and you drill a hole in each hollow spot in the mortar joint in the cinder blocks and it would allow the cinder block to drain then there was a PVC trough that you would put around the outside so the whole perimeter of the basement had this PVC trough in it that went to a sump pit and that worked excellent to alleviate my issues with water inside my cinder block wall okay so let's have a quick recap one you want to make sure that you're getting the water from your roof as far away from your house as possible two you want to make sure that the grading around your house is sloping away from your house three if you have a French drain system you want to make sure it's working properly and if you don't have a French drain system you may need to put one in four if you have water coming in in just one or two locations it could be because of a crack in your foundation wall or a pinhole in which case you're going to need to chisel out around the area and fill it in with hydraulic cement to prevent the water from continuing to leak in also this is just a high-level overview of the most common water problems that houses have and it's a list of things that you might want to look into if you're having water issues before you call them professional help so if you found this video helpful please give me a like and subscribe thanks

Channel: How to Hacks

Views: 120,851

Keywords: basement water problems, how to, water, water problems, fix water problems, waterproof basement, basement waterproofing, french drain, diy, do it yourself

Id: HH55MqjEtug

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2019