Preventing Water Seepage In Basement

Monday, December 4th, 2023 by Travis Kellogg

Challenge

A homeowner in Andover, Massachusetts, has lived in their home for over 20 years. They have always noticed random seepage in the basement's finished and unfinished areas. The water has caused damage to floors, finished walls, and other items. They removed the finished floors and the bottom 18 inches of the drywall because of the water damage. The homeowners desire a safe area for their kids that won't flood. They reached out to EFS for a free inspection of their basement.

Our Design Specialist Tom Armano met with the homeowner and discussed their goals and expectations. After a quick talk, Tom then began to look at the basement. During his inspection, he looked at the entire basement to find where the water was coming in. Throughout the basement there were multiple signs of water penetration, and Tom couldn't identify the exact location of where the water was entering the basement so he came up with a plan that would protect the entire basement from water penetration and to install new basement flooring.

Solution

Tom recommended installing the following items in the basement to protect the basement from water penetration:

TripleSafe Sump Pump
130 feet of WaterGuard
4 feet of TrenchDrain
2 IceGuards
25 feet of Exterior Drainage Line
SaniDry Sedona
550 sqft Elite Plank Flooring

The homeowners agreed with Tom's proposal, so we scheduled an installation.

Our installation team led by Gunther Billhardt arrived at the home and met with the homeowners to talk about the plans for the project. After a quick walkthrough with the homeowners, the team began chipping out concrete around the perimeter of the entire basement. We created a trench that was a couple of inches wide and deep so we could install our WaterGuard flush with the concrete slab. The perimeter drainage will lead to our sump pump. We chipped out concrete so we could install our basin. To accommodate our large basin we dug down 24 inches to install flush with the slab. After the basin was installed, we then placed our primary, backup, and battery backup pump into the basin. The team then ran PVC piping from each pump and fed it to the exterior of the home. Once on the outside, the team then installed two IceGuards to the PVC to prevent the system from backing up and 25 feet of buried Exterior Drainage Line to carry water away from the foundation. After the drainage was installed the team then mixed up concrete and poured it over the perimeter drainage and around the sump pump basin. While the concrete was curing the team installed our SaniDry Sedona dehumidifier next to the TripleSafe. The dehumidifier will control the humidity in the basement and discharge the moisture into the sump pump basin.

After the perimeter drainage system was installed and the concrete had cured we began to install our Elite Plank Flooring System. This system is a composite flooring that allows moisture to flow beneath it and will not get damaged by moisture like other flooring systems. The system snaps together without the use of nails or adhesives. Our team installed 550 sqft of flooring into the finished portion of the basement.

The team put the finishing touches on the project before taking the homeowner on a walkthrough to show them everything that was installed. The homeowners were very happy with the results of the project and now don't have to worry about water entering the basement and ruining things down there.