Water in Basement.....Help

[scott_vt]

Good Evenin John,
Thanks for that great post ! The excavation is going to take a bit longer than the jack hammering IMO !

Thanks for the tip on the excavating depth and such. I will certainly post on this thread as any updates become apparent, slowly Im sure ! I think I have to go to work tommorrow so I wont be doing much then, but I will try and keep at it !

John, I may PM you before its all over, and thanks for the offer !

 

[Egon]

Any chance there is straight in access to the basement where a plank and dolly system could be used to remove excess material?

 

[scott_vt]

Any chance there is straight in access to the basement where a plank and dolly system could be used to remove excess material?

Hello Egon,
The best I can do is the Bilco doors on the back side of the basement that goes out to the back yard, and then I have a low spot in the back corner of the property that I can dump the excess material !

 

[tommu56]

scott_vt
Maybe I'm lazy why haul the concrete and stone out set it aside, dig the dirt out and haul it out put the stone back in, then the pipe with the sock put concrete back as lower fill maybe another fabric and more stone and new cement.

tom

 

[JB4310]

Now I see why I didn't notice this post earlier, it was started before I became a member, anyway, Tom is right, on existing houses we do recycle the rubble and only use the new crushed stone to level the top of the trench to a uniform depth. as a contractor we have to do what we can to keep costs down, but that doesn't mean we are cutting corners by being cheap with materials, the whole idea of the stone is to leave air space between the aggregate leaving a path for water to flow, the smaller the aggregate the smaller the voids, the course concrete rubble allows for custom placement to allow the greatest amount of hollow space around the pipe.

That critical part between the top of the footing and the bottom of the floor I was referring to, is important because though most water comes from under the footing, some can come between the bottom of the foundation wall and the top of the footing and if there is no void or stone bridge there and the floor is poured tight on top of the footing, then that water will push up between the wall and the floor (cove joint), the reason being is that the concrete floor will shrink away from the wall but not off the footing, I have seen quite often where builders feel it's a better to pour the floor on top of the footing thinking it's necessary for support, when in fact they are sabotaging themselves, because even with an otherwise perfectly installed footing drain system, that particular source of water can not make it to the pipe, now the entire perimeter needs to be cut and redone with some sort of footing bridge put in. Could cost up to $10,000. for a large house, and be prevented with a couple wheel barrows of stone spread on top of the footing (1" min) before pouring the floor.

The plank method that Egon mentioned is nice as we use a wheel barrow, unfortunately we only see walk outs (level) or 2-3 steps on about 10% of the jobs, most of the time we're humping pails up the hatchway stairs, even worse, are the houses with no hatchway and everything has to come up a full flight of stairs into a kitchen and out the front or back door, that has to be figured into the cost of the job, made that mistake before!
Just need some heavy rains now, so I wouldn't have this much time for these long winded posts. Yup, I like bad weather, one old timer said I'm like an undertaker waiting for some ones basement to flood so I can get some work.
John,

 

[Egon]

Sitting here I'm wondering if drilling holes around the inside perimeter and installing vacuum points might be an easier solution as regards the amount of work required.

 

[scott_vt]

Yup, I like bad weather, one old timer said I'm like an undertaker waiting for some ones basement to flood so I can get some work.
John,

Evenin John,
Thanks for that long winded post ! You only have to mention $10,000 once and you get my attention real quick !

 

[scott_vt]

Sitting here I'm wondering if drilling holes around the inside perimeter and installing vacuum points might be an easier solution as regards the amount of work required.

Evenin Egon,
Youre cheering me up !!!

 

[JB4310]

Scott,
That dollar amount would be the high end for a very large house needing a complete system,
90% of the work we do is on existing houses with existing systems in the range of $1500. - $3,000. hatchway drains, window well drains, wall cracks, partial system failure/redo etc etc.

Egon,
The idea for the vacuum points would not be practical, the only way it would work is if there was already a pipe under the floor to allow the water to be drawn up from in a couple of places, could also get away with just a layer 4-8" deep of 3/4-1" crushed stone under the floor, that way a perforated sump pit (or a vacuum point I guess) could be placed anywhere in the floor and the water would perc into it, flowing latterly under the floor through the stone trap. Some builders chose to do it that way, wouldn't recommend it but it's better than no pipe and compacted fill under the floor.

On the subject of vacuums, we are thinking about how we could use vacuum excavation in our line of work, the units are still very large but are getting smaller, tow behinds vs truck mounted, all the utility crews are using them for excavating in the streets, a real time saver.

 

[Egon]

I really don't know why vacuum points would not work. They have been around for quite a few years. More years than I have.

As water is leaking into the basement there has to be porosity, permeability and water or pore pressure. Surely a number of holes drilled vertically through the floor and below would allow for the suction points to pick up water.

Of course the suction points would have to be sealed to the hole in the concrete floor.