Are you in need of more space in your home? Maybe you need a home office or a roomier bedroom for your teenager? A great solution to this problem is to consider remodelling your basement area.
Many people, especially those living in older homes, are put off by the fact that their basements just seem too damp and leaky. Don’t let this turn you off. There are many solutions that can transform your unfinished basement into an elegant area of comfortable living space, and you won’t have to break the bank to do it! The most important task is preparing and planning. Here are some first steps that you need to take.
Planning the Project
So how do you keep your basement interior completely dry and free of water ingress? The first and obvious step is to ensure that the exterior of your home is in good condition.
Here are some simple and fairly obvious checks that you can make yourself.
Take a stroll around the outer perimeter of your house:
- Does the ground around your foundation area slope away from your house and not towards it?
- Do you have flower beds and plantings reaching close up to the walls?
- Are your gutters clean and in good condition so that they flow smoothly into the downspouts?
- Are the downspouts from your gutters discharging the water a fair distance away from your walls?
- Are there any obvious cracks or faults in the walls or brickwork near ground level?
Gutter and downspouts are often the culprits
Rain water discharging from your downspouts, seeps down into the ground, and some of it will inevitably find its way through any weaknesses in the waterproofing of your foundations and basement slab. Not only can water seep sideways through weaknesses in your vertical basement sections, but it can and will rise upwards through the basement slab if it is not properly sealed. An expert waterproofing company can quickly and accurately assess this for you.
Why is ground slope so important?
Very often the backfilled dirt that was placed around your foundations when the house was built, will settle over time, so that it is lower than the surrounding dirt, causing the ground next to your foundations to sink, and slope towards the house. This allows water to filter down right next to your foundations, paving the way for leaks and dampness.
First solutions
- Ground slope problems can be relatively easily solved by adding dirt up against the foundation to create a fall of at least 2″ for every foot you move away from the wall.
- Make sure that your gutters are clean and free of debris, and that there are no holes from which roof water can discharge.
- Downspouts should discharge at least 5′ away from the perimeter of your walls.
- Check that there are no shrubs and other plants too close to your foundations. Make sure to keep all plantings at least a foot away from your foundations, and slope the flower beds away from the wall to ensure that the water flow is away from the foundations.
Where do I start?
While the above steps seem simple, it really takes an expert eye to properly evaluate them. In many cases a quick small change to the existing conditions can make all the difference to the finished project, ensuring that you end up with a dry and comfortable basement area.
A trained technician will quickly be able to spot these and any other problems that need to be addressed The correct way to go about getting such advice is to make use of an old established and experienced waterproofing company. Years of experience can spot issues and suggest solutions that will pre-empt later problems, ensuring that your new basement remains the dry and useful area that you want it to be. This is where a reliable and expert company like Anchor Waterproofing can be of the greatest help in advising you as to the proper steps you need to take to get your project off the ground, and successfully completed.
So your first step is to make use of the free estimate that Anchor Waterproofing will provide to get your project on the road to success!
