9 Ways to Keep Water Out of Your Basement

A flooded basement in Michigan is never a fun thing to walk home to. Not only does a soaking basement feel and stink like filth, it is a great danger to your home’s value. If left unimpeded, basement wetness can wreck flooring and walls, promote mold, and even harm roofing.

Some wet basements are easy to treat but if the situation comes from water flowing toward the residence from above, coming in from underground, or backing up via public storm drains—you must take more aggressive action.

Here are nine methods to keep water out of your basement that will keep it from becoming flooded.

1. Add gutter extensions

If you are directing water less than five feet away from your home, you can direct water farther out by adding synthetic or metal gutter extensions.

But gutter extensions aren’t the neatest or most effective solution, primarily if you’re likely to trip over them or run over all of them with a lawn mower. Stable, underground drainage pipe is unseen and capable of relocating huge quantities of gutter overflow much farther away from your family home.

For around $10 a foot, a landscape designer or waterproofing service provider will dig a sloping trench and install pipe to carry the water safely away from your home.

2. Plug Gaps

If you see water dribbling into your basement through crevices or openings around plumbing-pipes, you can plug the openings by yourself with hydraulic cement or polyurethane caulk for less than 20 dollars.

But if the water is coming up through the ground or at the joint where floor and walls meet, then the problem is groundwater, and plugs won’t do the trick.

3. Restore the crown

When the gutters are performing and you’ve plugged apparent holes, but water still dribbles into your basement or crawl space from high on walls, then surface water isn’t diverting away from the house as it should. Your home or apartment should sit on a “crown” of earth that slants at least six inches over the first 10 feet in all directions.

After some time, the soil around the home will settle. You can build it back with a shovel and soil. One cubic yard of a water shedding clay loam mix from a landscape supply house costs around thirty dollars (not including delivery and is sufficient for a 2-ft-wide, 3-inch-deep layer along fifty-seven ft of foundation.

4. Improve the surrounding landscape

Considering that your home’s siding slightly overlaps its foundation, building the crown may transport dirt—and rot and critters like termites—too close to siding for comfort: six inches is the minimum safe distance. In that case, create a berm (a mound of dirt) or a swale (a wide, shallow ditch), or other landscape features that relocate water long before it reaches your home or apartment.

5. Repair footing drains

If rain water is seeping into your home low on the walls or at the seams where walls meet the floor, your problem is hydro-static pressure pressing water up from the ground.

First, check whether you have footing drains, underground pipes installed whenever the house was built to direct water far away from the foundation.

If the drains are jammed up, open the clean out and flush the plumbing pipes with a garden hose. If it doesn’t do the job, a plumbing technician with an augur can do the job for about $600.

6. Clean Your Gutters

Clogged gutters can continue to keep water from diverting away from your residence. There are lots of ways to do the cleaning. You can find inventions like tongs on an extension pole, shop vacuums complete with gutter nozzles or even a remote-controlled gutter cleaning robot. However most methods eventually involve climbing a ladder. If you have gutters above the first story of your home or you aren’t relaxed on a ladder, you’re better off hiring a pro.

7. Install a curtain drain

If you don’t have functioning footing drains, install a curtain drain to divert water that’s traveling underground towards your apartment.

A kind of French drain, a curtain drain is a shallow trench—2 feet deep and 1.5 feet across—filled with pea gravel and perforated piping that captures water uphill of your home and carries it down the slope a safe distance away.

When the drain passes through an area with bushes or plants, consider changing to solid pipe to reduce the chance of roots growing into the piping and clogging it.

8. Pump the water

If you can’t keep subsurface water outside, you’ll have to divert it from the inside.

To create an interior drain structure, saw a channel around the floor, chip out the concrete, and lay perforated pipe in the hole.

Beginning at about $3,000, an interior system is the very best and least disruptive option in an unfinished basement with quick access. It’s also a good choice if your yard is filled with mature landscaping that digging an outside outflow system would destroy.

9. Waterproof the walls

Setting up an interior drainage system gets the water out but doesn’t waterproof the walls. For that, you should an external system: a French drain to relieve hydro-static pressure and exterior waterproofing to protect the foundation.

It’s a huge job that requires excavating around the residence, but it may be the best answer in case you have a foundation with several openings. It also keeps the muddle and water outside the house, which may be a wise selection if you don’t wish to tear up a finished basement.

The negative part, besides a sale price that can reach $20,000, is that your front yard takes a licking, and you may need to remove decks or walkways.

Aaron’s Restoration is a veteran-owned Michigan restoration company that has been serving the the Metro Detroit area and Michigan residents for over 15 years. Aaron’s Restoration helps clients with everything from a flooded basement to mold remediation.