Guide to Base­ment Mois­ture Con­trol — 5 Steps To Take

Feb 19, 2017 • By Matthew Stock with Mike Likvan.

Fight­ing base­ment mois­ture can be an ongo­ing bat­tle. This area of your home is sur­round­ed by moist soil and by base­ment walls that do lit­tle to keep that mois­ture out. Usu­al­ly base­ments have small win­dows to help ven­ti­late the area, but when do these ever get opened? Dur­ing the sea­son when the air is dry, they can be opened, but the air they’d let in is like­ly too chilly. Dur­ing the warm sea­son the air usu­al­ly comes in with humid­i­ty. So what can you do?

The first step toward base­ment mois­ture con­trol is to iden­ti­fy the source of the mois­ture. Once you know where it’s com­ing from you can elim­i­nate, or at least con­trol, it. This is the best long term approach because if you only com­pen­sate for base­ment mois­ture by installing a dehu­mid­i­fi­er, you may be mask­ing the signs that mois­ture is dam­ag­ing the struc­ture of your home. By the time you dis­cov­er what dam­age the mois­ture has been doing, the destruc­tion will be so advanced the repair bills will be crazy expensive.

5 Steps To Help Con­trol Base­ment Moisture

Here are steps you can take to elim­i­nate or con­trol sources of base­ment mois­ture and gain valu­able liv­ing space in your home.

1. Dry­er vent
One large source of base­ment mois­ture that is eas­i­ly con­trol­lable is the moist air that comes out of your dry­er and blows that wet­ness to the out­side. Often­times the vent pipe tak­ing this moist air out­side gets dis­con­nect­ed and all that mois­ture gets blown into the base­ment instead.

Solu­tion
Look behind the dry­er and make sure the metal­lic look­ing pipe com­ing from the back of the dry­er is secure­ly fas­tened. Then run the dry­er and make sure the pipe from your dry­er to the out­side doesn’t have leaks. If it does, use foil tape to per­ma­nent­ly seal the pipe leaks.

2. Open sump basin
Mois­ture inside the base­ment can come from an open sump basin. When the basin doesn’t have a lid, the water evap­o­rat­ing from inside can be a con­stant source of base­ment moisture.

Solu­tion
Put a cov­er on the basin so the water is enclosed in a sealed con­tain­er. Get a lid that screws down to the basin, seal­ing the water inside. If you have a clay or met­al basin, get a lid that can be screwed to the sur­round­ing con­crete, cre­at­ing a tight seal.

3. Seep­age
Water leak­ing in from where the floor meets the wall, through cracks or over the top of the foun­da­tion intro­duces a tremen­dous amount of mois­ture into your base­ment. This mois­ture pro­motes a damp, musty feel to your base­ment and allows the ever-present mold spores to thrive and spread.

Solu­tion
Water­proof­ing spe­cial­ists, like U.S. Water­proof­ing, are trained to see the ear­ly signs of seep­age and have ways to per­ma­nent­ly elim­i­nate or at least man­age that mois­ture, so it doesn’t cause prob­lems. Our repair meth­ods include repair­ing cracks, installing inte­ri­or drainage where the floor meets the wall, and pre­vent­ing top of foun­da­tion seep­age. If there is a gen­er­al damp­ness in the base­ment but no iden­ti­fi­able sources of water entry, we can install a pow­er­ful dehu­mid­i­fi­er as the best course of action.

4. Plumb­ing Leaks
Plumb­ing pipes are typ­i­cal­ly out of sight behind show­er walls, inside van­i­ties, behind the wash­er or under laun­dry sinks. They are also typ­i­cal­ly prone to leak. Because they are out of sight, base­ment plumb­ing leaks can exist for a long time, qui­et­ly caus­ing wood to rot, dry­wall to crum­ble, and mold to thrive before the leaks are discovered.

Solu­tion
Make a point to reg­u­lar­ly inspect your plumb­ing pipes, sink shut­offs and drain pipes. Run water when you are inspect­ing them to see if the drain pipes or shut­offs leak. Push firm­ly on the bot­tom of your base­ment show­er walls to see if they are spongy and reg­u­lar­ly check pipe con­nec­tions and the floor below them for signs they may be leaking.

5. Dirt / Grav­el Crawl Space
Crawl spaces with dirt or grav­el floors tend to feel moist because the ground mois­ture can eas­i­ly evap­o­rate up into the crawl space. If your crawl space entrance is open to the base­ment, this gives that mois­ture an easy migra­tion path into your base­ment. (If it’s not open to the base­ment, the mois­ture will still rise and affect the liv­ing space above it.)

Solu­tion
If the crawl space mois­ture is enough that you can scoop it into a cup, then a drainage sys­tem with pump needs to be installed. If the mois­ture is just damp­ness, encap­su­late the crawl with a sealed lin­er to keep the mois­ture from enter­ing the house. Warn­ing: Nev­er put a pow­er­ful dehu­mid­i­fi­er in a damp, dirt floor crawl space. It will suck the mois­ture out of the dirt that’s sup­port­ing the foun­da­tion and cause it to sink.

Tak­ing the steps above should have a con­sid­er­able impact on con­trol­ling your base­ment mois­ture. When you are ready to make your base­ment a nicer, dri­er place to enjoy, sched­ule a free vis­it with us. We have solu­tions for even the most seri­ous base­ment mois­ture problems.

Tags: basement waterproofing solutions, foundation waterproofing, diy basement waterproofing

Previous Article | Learning Center Archive | Next Article