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Spring Water Problems

It’s time to start getting your home ready for spring.

Part 1:  Wet basements are the biggest problem. 

Most basement water problems are caused by exterior landscaping and hardscaping.  As a MN home inspector for the past 27 years, I have found this condition is seldom repaired until it becomes a problem.  What I mean is until a homeowner sees water they assume nothing is wrong.  This is not true.  Actually, small amounts of basement moisture can be more destructive than large water events, such as flooding.  Why, because as water sits on the walls it deteriorates the concrete, fungal growth begins to take hold, and a force, hydrostatic pressure, begins to push the foundation in.  The longer these conditions exist the more apt they are to develop into something substantial.

When I inspect a home for a client, I always ask them, at the beginning of the inspection, what type of concerns they may have in purchasing this home.  Almost always in the top 3 is that they do not want moisture in the basement.  After inspecting over 19,000 homes, I would estimate over 85% have some sign of moisture in the basement.  That is such a high percentage, that prior to inspecting the basement, I can almost answer their initial concern.  Yes, this home has basement dampness.

9 out of 10 times the cause of a wet basement is poor slope around the foundation.  Typically, this is corrected by raising the grade and hard surfaces so they slope away from the basement.  It’s so simple.

This spring it may be a good time for you to check the slope around your house…before it’s a problem.

Doug Hastings
MN Home Inspector, Minneapolis & St. Paul
ASHI Certified Inspector, ACI
Kaplan University, Home Inspection Lead Instructor

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Moisture Problems – Hardscaping (Part 5)

Although landscaping is so very important to a dry basement, sometimes other things outside the home can cause water to work its way inside. Because of difficulty and cost, people are often hesitant to consider the negative impact hardscaping can have on moisture intrusion. What I’m talking about here are:

  • Walks
  • Steps
  • Patios
  • Decks
  • Driveways

Just like the earth, over time these wood, asphalt, and concrete surfaces can settle. Often the settlement will either puddle water alongside or actually drive water towards the foundation. As I said these hard surfaces can be expensive to remove and replace. For this reason, most of the time, homeowners will leave the settled hardscaping and try anything and everything else to try to correct the problem…and it never works! There is a core principal here and that is, if water is being driven towards the foundation, at some time, it is bound to come into the basement. It might not be in normal rain or snow thaw, but during in-climate conditions it will.

That’s why if you ask a homeowner selling their house if they have moisture in the basement, their immediate reaction will be no. Then when they think about it for a moment, they will say something like well maybe a little bit on real heavy rainfalls or only when the downspouts are disconnected or only when it rains really hard from the north. What they are saying is the landscape and hardscape are not sloped adequately to handle large volumes of water. Homeowners, home buyers, and real estate professionals don’t expect basements or crawl spaces to be dry some of the time or even most of the time. Today, these people demand that these below grade spaces be dry ALL of the time.

So the grounds surrounding the home are very important to protect against moisture intrusion…but that’s just the beginning!

Doug & Julie Hastings
Your House Whisperers
Minnesota Home Inspection Services

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Moisture Problems – the Basement (Part 2)

We will launch our tour together in the basement or crawl space seeking moisture, figuring out its source, and providing solutions to the problem. The most common dampness in below grade foundations originates from outside the building. Moisture intrusion is caused by inadequate control of surface and ground waters. The results can be discolored walls, seepage on the floor around the perimeter of the foundation, or a completely flooded basement.

So what causes these conditions?

The most common cause of basement moisture is improper landscaping. Simply put the earth grading is sloped towards the foundation. This is called negative slope. The first step in managing surface water is to make sure the earth slopes away, positive slope, from the foundation on all sides of the building. Even the smallest depressions or settlement of soil can trap water allowing it to dampen the walls and stain the foundation.

Although type of soil can have an impact on whether surface water will enter the building, there are 3 common grading defects that should always be corrected. They are:

1. Flat or negative slope
2. Settled backfill
3. No drainage swale

So we see that landscaping is always a problem, but is that the only thing on the outside of the home that causes moisture intrusion?  Check back soon for part 3 in our home moisture problem resolution series!

Doug & Julie Hastings
Your House Whisperers
Residential & Commercial Home Inspectors

 

 

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