Author Topic: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question  (Read 3368 times)

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #25 on: December 02, 2012, 07:54:37 PM »
i couldn't say, we just did it last week.  he also installed this basin where the crawlspace opens up, with a "sump pump" that periodically drains it into the lawn.  but that picture you posted looks just like what we did.  we also had the spout(? no holes) drain running on top of the fabric, above the rocks and the other (?) type of drain (the one with holes in it).

cool, thanks this is really helpful!

I get into a project and get so fucking OCD it drive me crazy  :-[

Natural Man

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #26 on: December 02, 2012, 10:19:51 PM »
if you dont have a functionning draining system around the foundations, you need to keep water away by changing gutters and modify slopes / hills, changing windows in basement and buying back flow preventers.

A house need a good hat (roof) , vest (walls isolation) and shoes (foundations).

Water can enter basements either from old rotten wooden windows, from cracks in the foundations or from the drain (too much water in spring, for example, when snow is melting, municipality redirects water in the sewers, water goes inside basements if no back flow preventers are installed).

The critical period is spring if you live in an area with a lot of snow, or if there are storms that suddenly saturate the soil with a lot of water.

Gutters must lead water from the roof far away from the foundations of the home, it means extending the gutter underground to reach a burried well in your backyard. And you have to have positive hills/slopes that redirects water falling near the walls of foundations away from them on the surface. Negative slopes directs water toward the foundations walls. Most of the time it's improper gutters configuration that saturates the soil around the house with water and leads to leaks from windows or cracks. Just make sure gutters dont lead water right near the foundations of your house, extend them far away and create positive slopes.

You can install a draining system that is connected to the local sewers but it costs a lot. Most of the time redirecting water from gutters far away in the backyard in burried wells, building new positives slopes going to 2 or 3 meters away from the foundations and installing new windows in basement is enough to protect your house. You also have to have back flow preventer installed between sewers and your house's plumbing so water doesnt flood your house.  
Now if you have minor cracks, you can fill them from the inside, if you have huge crack you ve got to dig along the house's fondations to fix them with a special filler and it costs a lot to dig.

Do you have a draining system installed? where is the house?

Natural Man

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #27 on: December 02, 2012, 10:24:34 PM »
yeah. And my belief is that those water in ur basement companies that come fix ur leak for thousands of dollars for the most part r rip offs. Usually wut happens is a home is built. The original builder was I smart enuff to know to slope a bit away so water didn't enter the basement. Yet after homes change hands, people do improper landscaping, land settles etc. new owners have water in basement and they consult these companies who fleece then telling them the original builder should never have built the house this way or that. When most of the basement problems are down spouting or gutter clogging issues or land improper land elevation. OP if u don't have neighbors close to u call united rentals. Rent a bobcat on a sat AM. they will deliver and u keep it till Monday n ur only charged one day. It's the easiest way to slope land away from ur house and its under 200 bucks. It's very difficult to slope even six to ten feet of land evenly toward the ditch with a shovel. The ditch part is honestly easier.
I agree with that tenfold... contractors are assholes...just do some research by yourself -it s all over the internet- and do the changes yourself and it will cost you ten time less than trusting one of these assholes. They re just good at ripping old lonely people who cant take care of their homes and landscapes due to old age off their money. They always overestimate the costs of what they need, hoping customer will not figure it out.

It's really simple, just keep water away from foundations at all cost, it's basic physics.

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #28 on: December 02, 2012, 10:45:20 PM »
Thanks uberman, the lot slopes down slightly from the front, ending in a hill about 25' into the back yard.  


slight dip/depression/bowl about 15' across on the side of the house that collects water

The soil is probably 50% clay, (not to bad, it does seem to drain).  


The basement doesn't leak anywhere but on the side where for some reason there's a slight depression/bowl shape in the side yard.  I want to run this french drain (landscape fabric, gravel, perforated corrugated pipe, more fabric, and soil on top) along the foundation (but off of it a few feet like suggested in the thread) to divert the water out of the "bowl" and off the hill.

I want to run a second unperforated pipe parallel to drain the two down spouts that currently let water run into said depression.

I'm pretty sure it will work, because before this I laid a 10' x 10' tarp down with bags of mulch to run water away and the flooding stopped.

Just wanted more opinions, thanks!

Henda

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #29 on: December 03, 2012, 04:31:52 PM »
our building methods and regs are different but anywhere the ground slopes towards the house we install a Linear drainage chanell along the full length of the property,this then piped ino a soakaway dug a few metres from the house foundations. The soakaway is a hole around a cubic metre and filled with rubble.

BILL ANVIL

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #30 on: December 03, 2012, 06:34:52 PM »
this won't fix the damage to your foundation however

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #31 on: December 03, 2012, 07:15:28 PM »
Thank you guys

The foundation seems fine, there's a crack that's less than 1/4'', I'm going to patch it with hydraulic cement.

Tapeworm

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #32 on: December 03, 2012, 09:24:56 PM »
What's the cause of the dip in the yard?

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #33 on: December 03, 2012, 10:16:53 PM »
What's the cause of the dip in the yard?

I don't know, I don't think the basement always leaked.  It seems like the depression kind of appeared over the last couple years.  Settling?  I think the prior owners had a deep layer of good soil spread around to plant a good lawn.  Maybe it wasn't compacted very well in that spot?  ???

sync pulse

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #34 on: December 03, 2012, 10:47:31 PM »
In Houston people don't have cellars because of shallow aquifers...Did this house ever have a septic tank?  The depression might be an unused septic tank collapsing into itself.  
  Your idea for a "french drain" is good and may solve the problem.

Tapeworm

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #35 on: December 03, 2012, 10:50:33 PM »
I don't know, I don't think the basement always leaked.  It seems like the depression kind of appeared over the last couple years.  Settling?  I think the prior owners had a deep layer of good soil spread around to plant a good lawn.  Maybe it wasn't compacted very well in that spot?  ???

Earthworks isn't my field but it sounds like something you should look into before spending time and money on the water ingress.  The 1/4" crack you mentioned isn't from water on concrete.  I'd establish the cause of the dip and make sure it isn't also the cause of the cracking concrete, especially since they're on the same side of the house.  If you've got a collapsed septic tank or a sinkhole or something you'll might have to do something to stop it destabilizing the earth around you.

If you haven't owned the place for long, maybe the previous owners decommissioned a septic tank, filled it, and you're just seeing the result of settling there.  And hopefully the crack is just the result of years of slow settlement and not something that suddenly happened due to a falling footing.

Could be wrong but I doubt it's just settlement from a topsoil spread.  I can't see that creating a visible dip.  If it's something that has developed and wasn't always there, I'd investigate.

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #36 on: December 03, 2012, 10:55:27 PM »
Earthworks isn't my field but it sounds like something you should look into before spending time and money on the water ingress.  The 1/4" crack you mentioned isn't from water on concrete.  I'd establish the cause of the dip and make sure it isn't also the cause of the cracking concrete, especially since they're on the same side of the house.  If you've got a collapsed septic tank or a sinkhole or something you'll might have to do something to stop it destabilizing the earth around you.

If you haven't owned the place for long, maybe the previous owners decommissioned a septic tank, filled it, and you're just seeing the result of settling there.  And hopefully the crack is just the result of years of slow settlement and not something that suddenly happened due to a falling footing.

Could be wrong but I doubt it's just settlement from a topsoil spread.  I can't see that creating a visible dip.  If it's something that has developed and wasn't always there, I'd investigate.

Thanks tapeworm, I appreciate the help!  I believe the crack is old because the house is, and it looks like you can even see a different basement paint color in the crack.  This is (and always has been) in the city, so I'm sure there isn't any septic issues.  I'll def look into it now, I see what you're saying.  Thanks!

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #37 on: December 03, 2012, 10:59:27 PM »
Have you seen those houses in the Netherlands that float?  They make a concrete basement than actually float it and build a house on it.  It's really amazing.  I don't see how those keep out water, but fucking houses can't.


sync pulse

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #38 on: December 03, 2012, 11:03:43 PM »
Ships have slow leaks...resulting in what they call "bilge" that has to be pumped out regularly.

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #39 on: December 03, 2012, 11:06:18 PM »
Ships have slow leaks...resulting in what they call "bilge" that has to be pumped out regularly.

Oh yeah, I'm familiar with that!  Comes in handy when you get out into the lake and realize you forgot the transom plug.  :-[

Tapeworm

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #40 on: December 03, 2012, 11:16:26 PM »
Oh, well if you're in the city it's just the neighbors tunneling in to steal your white women.  Throw some Old English 800 down the hole and they'll get too dizzy to keep digging.

Maybe note down the length of that crack as well as other signs of movement in the house and see if they're propagating.

If records won't help, digging out a few feet of soil from the sunken area vs another area might show if the dip is a different batch of dirt.  Even if it turns out not to be anything to do with foundation shift, it would be good to solve the sinking so you don't have to revisit landscaping again later.  It's a shit job.

Another practice for stopping water I've heard of is bentonite injection, which you could probably do yourself with a rented auger and pump if it's just a matter of shooting it in there, but there might be engineering considerations I don't know about since the shit swells so much.  Routing downpipe water away is certainly a better way to go.

Tapeworm

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #41 on: December 03, 2012, 11:28:10 PM »
Have you seen those houses in the Netherlands that float?  They make a concrete basement than actually float it and build a house on it.  It's really amazing.  I don't see how those keep out water, but fucking houses can't.



In theory, you could 'tank' your basement by plastering with a waterproof cement mix.  Extremely small particles in the mix like silica fume serve to fill up voids through which water can pass.  I think that's what they use when shotcreting in ground pools and water towers.  It would probably fail in a basement though since there's no equal opposing pressure like in a swimming pool.  Can't say how those dike fingering clog hopping tulip clutchers do it.

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #42 on: December 03, 2012, 11:38:02 PM »
Oh, well if you're in the city it's just the neighbors tunneling in to steal your white women. Throw some Old English 800 down the hole and they'll get too dizzy to keep digging.

Maybe note down the length of that crack as well as other signs of movement in the house and see if they're propagating.

If records won't help, digging out a few feet of soil from the sunken area vs another area might show if the dip is a different batch of dirt.  Even if it turns out not to be anything to do with foundation shift, it would be good to solve the sinking so you don't have to revisit landscaping again later.  It's a shit job.

Another practice for stopping water I've heard of is bentonite injection, which you could probably do yourself with a rented auger and pump if it's just a matter of shooting it in there, but there might be engineering considerations I don't know about since the shit swells so much.  Routing downpipe water away is certainly a better way to go.

hahahahahahah!!!!  ;D thanks!

Roger Bacon

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #43 on: December 03, 2012, 11:40:17 PM »
In theory, you could 'tank' your basement by plastering with a waterproof cement mix.  Extremely small particles in the mix like silica fume serve to fill up voids through which water can pass.  I think that's what they use when shotcreting in ground pools and water towers.  It would probably fail in a basement though since there's no equal opposing pressure like in a swimming pool.  Can't say how those dike fingering clog hopping tulip clutchers do it.

hahahhaha x2!!

I know a couple older guys that do concrete work.  They're in their 50's, don't workout, and have a better physique than 80% of people.

The Abdominal Snoman

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #44 on: December 04, 2012, 02:10:58 PM »
If your house foundation is below grade, and the exterior walls weren't waterproofed when built, it will take some major ditch digging to get it right. 

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Re: Any home builders/contractors on getbig? I have a question
« Reply #45 on: December 04, 2012, 03:25:31 PM »
Ships have slow leaks...resulting in what they call "bilge" that has to be pumped out regularly.

some boats use that water in the bilge for weight distribution, utilizing the different ballast tanks they might have.