A Basement Experiment
The basement in our house leaks when it rains. It’s a significant problem that results in water covering about 1/3 of the floor. We eventually want to use part of the basement as living space, so this is something that’ll have to be resolved – the sooner, the better.
I’ve been doing a lot of research into basement water management. One conclusion I’ve come to is that water entering the basement (at least of the volume we’re seeing) doesn’t really do any harm. It’s more an inconvenience than anything.
One interesting product I’ve come across is this: DryTrak. It forms a channel around the perimeter of a basement to lead water to a sump pump. We don’t have a sump pump (yet), but we do have a basement drain that works just fine.
Our basement is level on two sides, with the other two sides gently sloping toward the drain. I’m going to try a low-buck alternative to DryTrak – I’m going to take pressure-treated 1x2s to form a perimeter channel about 3” wide, adhered to the floor with construction adhesive. We’ve already bought the materials we’ll need at a cost of about $45. Assuming it’ll be water tight (this is an experiment, right?) the slope on the basement floor should be sufficient to promote good gravity drainage.
This is what we’re starting with:
This is one corner of the basement. It’s pretty dirty from all the past water leakage, and you can see where I’ve started to clean it a little. I need to clean the concrete in order to get a good bond from the construction cement. On the far left edge of the picture you can see the corner of the outside basement door – this is where the channel will start. There’s a great utility sink in the basement that I’ll hookup a hose and sprayer to. I’ve already found with the little cleaning I’ve done is that a good rinse is required to get the concrete properly clean.
Ok. I’m going to go dive in now. Wish me luck.
