How Base­ment Water Prob­lems can Ruin Your Chica­go Dream House

Dec 3, 2012 • By Matthew Stock.

For many peo­ple, own­ing the ide­al home is a life­long goal. Many Amer­i­cans dream of a cab­in in the woods, a sun­lit beach house or a tri-lev­el on a golf course. For Chicagoans, it could be a South side gray­stone, a two-flat in Wrigleyville or a man­sion on the North Shore. No mat­ter the style or loca­tion, a dream house is a goal for many of us.

Not to bust your bub­ble, but even when dreams come true they may not mea­sure up to our imag­i­na­tions. Even dream hous­es have drafty win­dows, balky fur­naces and, yep, base­ment water problems.

Base­ment Water Prob­lems Can Be Detect­ed and Eliminated

If you’re a smart, well-pre­pared home buy­er, you’ll real­ize that even the best-built, most ful­ly equipped, beau­ti­ful homes may have a few flaws. Base­ment water prob­lems don’t have to be a deal-break­er if you keep in mind two sim­ple pieces of advice:

• • Don’t ignore signs of base­ment seepage
  • Have a gen­er­al idea of the repairs available

Signs of base­ment water prob­lems – We’ve writ­ten ear­li­er in this blog about how home­buy­ers can spot signs of base­ment water dam­age and that advice cer­tain­ly applies when hunt­ing for your Chica­go-area dream house. Need­less to say, if you see water on the floor, you know there’s a prob­lem. There are, how­ev­er, many more sub­tle signs like a musty odor in the base­ment, efflo­res­cence or hon­ey­combed con­crete on the walls and water stains or dis­col­oration where the walls and floor meet.

Not all signs of base­ment water prob­lems (or poten­tial ones) are to be found inside. Dam­aged or bad­ly clogged gut­ters, down­spouts that dis­charge water right next to the foun­da­tion and bad grad­ing that cre­ates a slope toward the house are pret­ty good indi­ca­tors that seep­age is imminent.

Also, don’t for­get that Illi­nois, along with Indi­ana and Wis­con­sin, requires that all home sell­ers report any known base­ment water prob­lems on their real estate dis­clo­sure forms.

Base­ment seep­age repairs – Just because your dream house has a wet base­ment doesn’t mean your dream is over. Vir­tu­al­ly any seep­age prob­lem can be repaired and many can be done sim­ply and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Seep­ing wall cracks can be inject­ed with expand­ing ure­thane for a fast, per­ma­nent repair. Seep­age through the cove joint or from floor cracks can be stopped by installing inte­ri­or drain tile, worn-out sump pumps are eas­i­ly replaced and even seep­ing mason­ry foun­da­tions can be sealed with an exte­ri­or water­proof­ing mem­brane.

Poten­tial prob­lems you may have spot­ted out­doors can also be per­ma­nent­ly reme­died. Gut­ters can be eas­i­ly cleaned and repaired. Under­ground down­spout exten­sions will car­ry dis­charge water away from the foun­da­tion and often some minor re-grad­ing will take care of those ​“neg­a­tive slope” issues so that rain water won’t add to your home’s seep­age problems.

One thing I haven’t addressed here is struc­tur­al dam­age to the foun­da­tion. This is a more seri­ous prob­lem and gen­er­al­ly requires major repairs but, in most cas­es, repair is pos­si­ble that will per­ma­nent­ly sta­bi­lize the home and its foun­da­tion. We’ll write more about foun­da­tion dam­age in the future.

So, no mat­ter what your dream house looks like, you need to know that base­ment water prob­lems are a pos­si­bil­i­ty but needn’t be a deal-break­er. At U.S. Water­proof­ing, we’ve helped more than 300,000 home­own­ers in Chica­go, Mil­wau­kee and north­west Indi­ana live their dreams with safe, dry base­ments. If you’re con­cerned about your dream house or any house, why not ask for our free advice?

Tags: new home, chicago basement waterproofing, basement waterproofing chicago, basement water problems

Previous Article | Learning Center Archive | Next Article