Searching for the Silver Lining (of a rain cloud)
The joys of home ownership are never-ending. We had a pretty miserable weekend in these parts.
It rained.
All weekend long.
The ground is so saturated that it can’t hold any more water. So now it’s in our house.
Evidently, it started Thursday night with a string of thunderstorms. I was made aware that we had a problem when I went to get some clean clothes out of the dryer on Friday morning. As I walked down the basement stairs, I noticed that the carpet on the floor looked weird. My first thought was to blame the dog. As I continued my descent, it became clear that we had about an inch of water collect overnight - and the carpets and rugs acted like sponges, making for one squishy mess.
We’ve never had water in this house. Humidity, yes - water, no. Neither of us have any idea what to do in this situation, so we punted.
I had a big all-day meeting at work, so Matt took the day off, rented a carpet cleaner, and spent the day sucking water out of the rugs. By Saturday morning, things were drying up. The carpets were feeling dry, and it looked like it was all going to be ok.
But more thunderstorms rolled in early Sunday morning, and it rained here most all day. The water is back. It’s not coming through a window or a crack - but seeping through the painted cinderblock walls. I’ve never seen anything like it and I’m afraid that it’s going to cost a small fortune to get it fixed.
On the bright side, Matt moved nearly everything that lives downstairs - which gave us an opportunity to go through all of the stuff we had in storage and throw out anything that couldn’t be salvaged. Our laundry room had been in a constant state of disarray for months (Matt termed the area it ‘Mount Laundry’ with it’s revolving piles of dirty clothes on the floor and clean clothes folded on the table), and we had to wash, fold, and put away every article of clothing, every towel, and blanket that we own. This made me realize that we have lots of clothes we haven’t worn for awhile and it’s time for a trip to Goodwill.
Yay - less clutter!
But some of the casualties were pretty serious. Some old photos and year books were ruined beyond repair. All of our carpet is going to have to be ripped out and replaced. Some of the decorations and lights that I purchased for the wedding were destroyed.
The worst part is that the whole house smells musty and moldy. We’re going to have to bring in a pro to make sure that we don’t end up with a mold problem. Buh-bye emergency fund.
Rain, rain, go away!
Stumble it!
June 9th, 2008 at 7:42 am
I’m pretty sure there’s a kind of paint you can get that will seal up those cinder blocks. Its a pretty common problem.
In the meantime, you should get a leakfrog. Its a cute little device that beeps loudly whenever a small bit of water touches it. That way you know when it starts, and you can proactively start cleaning up. Wet/dry vac all the way.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Yuck!
We had a lot of rain this past weekend, too. Luckily, our basement has stayed dry. I’ve always been leary about putting carpet in basements for the very reason you wrote about!
I really hope you don’t end up with a mold problem. Hopefully the smell is from the carpet and it will clear up now that you’ve removed it
Thinking positively here 
June 9th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Wow, that’s crazy.
I live in Colorado, so we rarely have water problems.
Usually, it’s hail or snow related. During winter 2006/2007, a lot of people had driveway issues due to de-icer causing the concrete to chip.
Hope you get everything straightened out soon!
June 9th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Ah, a homeowner’s nightmare. I’ve lived it, so perhaps my free advice isn’t entirely valueless:
A lot of this depends on your property’s topography, the soil types, etc…
You can try the paint sealant thing the earlier poster suggested, but basically that’s marginally effective against damp and useless against actual water coming in. Cement just isn’t a water barrier. You can’t make it into one, and you wouldn’t want to make it one on the inside surface anyway; the bricks and mortar would still be full of water, which can’t be good…
If there’s one crack that leaks, you can maybe patch it with hydraulic cement. Otherwise, if (as it sort of sounds in your description) it is coming in all over, you really have to fix it from the outside. Sometimes simple things like gutters with long spouts and the like, to direct as much surface water away as possible, will work. But if not, it can quickly get expensive.
In our case, we had a foundation perimeter drain installed and the outside of our foundation shielded with a rubber barrier. And (!) we had a drainage trench sort of affair constructed along the uphill part of the property. No more water. The process involved a backhoe excavating to below the foundation all around, laying a gravel-n-pipe drain, putting on the rubber, and backfilling. I think it was $10 or 15k in the end. Previous efforts, including a patch guy, an inject-expanding-foam-sealant guy, and a surface drain guy were money wasted (totalling another 8k or worse).
Pay close attention to where the water comes from; spend lots of time understanding the problem before you tackle it in any substantial way. In our case, we found that flood-generating rain+thaws were only about a twice a year event, so it was a bit hard to “test” any of the simple fixes. In the end it took us years before we gave up on the half-baked nonsense and had the proper excavation and drainage done.
Warning: there are many fly-by-night franchised “solution” companies floating about that purport to solve these sorts of problems. Be careful…
Mold-wise, if you can get the basement dry within a day or three, then keep it dry and run a dehumidifier nonstop for days or weeks, that bone-dry condition may suffice to halt the mold and odor. However, if it gets wet or even moist at all often, you may find yourself set up for a bigger mold issue or even a secondary moisture-related problem like termites. So aside from immediately drying things out as best you can, you have to solve the water first before you know where you will fall on the cleanup spectrum between a once-over with a mop and tearing out all the walls.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I am pretty sure that you will have to remove the carpets, even if they are dry now, or you will have a mold problem. Once they get wet, that’s it.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
That’s got to be a bummer.
@Jessica: I’ll have to check out the leak frog, thanks.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Wow! Best wishes for finding the right solution that is a real fix.
The post by Grant, I think, is right on the target except I did not think it was a rubber barrier that is used. Moisture has to get out of the house too.
Nevertheless, I am sending his recommendations to another person that has a similar issue.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Thanks for the tips, all.
@Jessica - I have never heard of a leakfrog - I’m totally going to look into a few of those.
@Grant - thanks for the detail. I always trust the voice of experience. I’m hoping that we can forego the trench/backhoe route, but that may be in our future.
This is the first time that we’ve had water in our basement in two years (and based on the nice carpet that used to be in our basement, it’s the first time in a very long time). The neighbors say that the last time it flooded around here was 1993 - and those floods were legendary.
We just finished ripping out all of the carpet (not a fun job, by the way, but to be fair - Matt did the lion’s share of the work), squeegied and mopped, and now we’re running fans and a dehumidifier.
I’m ready to be over this - but with more rain in the forecast, we may be getting the shopvac out again tomorrow.
In the past, the dehumidifier has been enough to counter the damp. We’ll see if that’s going to be enough this go around.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Ah, fun with carpet.
Anyway, good luck. If it’s really a once a decade issue, you may have a heck of a time concluding that it’s really fixed. But on the bright side, an event that rare does suggest that a bit of guttering, grading, or other simple water redirection may suffice.
@Joe - one really is supposed to waterproof the outside of a foundation. Building codes usually require waterproof coatings (ie tar goop) as “dampproofing” in normal circumstances, and impermeable membrane waterproofing in wet areas.
Indeed, as boring as it may sound to read, I would recommend any homeowner to flip through the building code for their area. You’ll probably find the bad construction method which caused that nagging problems on your house; or with luck you’ll find a badly done something that you can fix before it becomes a fiasco.