Solving Water Problems In Basements Water Problems
(Page 3 of 3)
May/June 1986
by Harold W. Dickinson and MOTHER's staff
6 Install a slab drain system for high groundwater
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If your water problems stem from a rising water table, a perimeter drain alone won't dry out your basement. You need a way for water to get to the sump from both inside and outside of the footings.
What I'm about to describe involves backbreaking labor-yours or your employee'sbut I don't know any way to get around it. You're going to remove a 3-foot-wide section of your basement floor all the way around the inside perimeter of the basement walls.
Start by breaking out the floor and digging the hole for the sump pump, and then work along parallel to the wall removing a piece of the slab at a time in a 3-foot swath. This will go more quickly and easily than you might think if you'll undermine a section of the floor with a shovel to the depth of the shovel blade and then break the unsupported slab with a 10-pound sledge.
Use Fig. 2 as a guide for installing the gravel and drain tile and repouring the floor. Be sure to include the weep holes and the inch of gravel on top of the footing and the weep holes so that water can drain from the block cores to the sump. Keep the new concretemixed at a ratio of about 1 part portland to 4 parts fine, clean gravel-level with, or about the thickness of a sheet of paper higher than, the adjoining old concrete.
7 Install a block drain system
One solution to water that's draining down through block cores to leak out between the joint of the wall and the floor is to drain the block cores to a sump pump. Go up about 4 inches from the floor to avoid mortar that may have dropped to the bottom of the cores, and drill a hole in each block core. Caulk a short piece of plastic pipe into each hole, and plumb the drains together with appropriate Ts so they lead to the sump. Observe proper drain slope of 1/4 inch per foot, so that water doesn't back up.
EDITORS NOTE:Harold W Dickinson is a building inspector in Olivia, Minnesota.
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