Six repairs, matched to the symptom
Every wet basement has a route the water takes. The route decides the repair. This page lists the six we do and the symptom each one answers, so you can read your own basement before we arrive.
Symptom to repair
Start from what you see
A wet line down the wall from one spot
A crack in a poured wall. Injection, from inside, in a few hours.
Water at the floor-wall joint after rain
Water standing outside the footing. Interior drainage or, if the wall must stay dry, exterior waterproofing.
Damp across a whole wall, worse at the bottom
Failed or missing tile, or a block wall taking water. Tile replacement with the wall sealed.
Water coming up through the floor
High water table. Under-slab drainage to a sump with a backup pump.
Wet below a basement window
The window well is filling. Well drain, cover and grade, usually without touching the wall.
Only leaks in spring
Surface water over frozen ground. Downspouts and grade first; drainage if that does not hold.
The six
What each repair is
- Interior waterproofing
The slab is cut back along the wall, a perforated pipe goes in beside the footing in clear stone, and a wall membrane carries seepage into it. Works in any season and leaves the yard alone.
- Exterior waterproofing
The wall is excavated to the footing, cleaned, sealed with a rubberised membrane and covered with drainage board, with a new weeping tile in clear stone. The only method that keeps the wall itself dry.
- Foundation crack repair
Ports along the crack, the face sealed between them, resin injected at low pressure so the crack fills front to back instead of being patched on the inside where it will leak again.
- Sump pumps and backups
A lined pit, a pump that clears the water your house actually gets, a check valve, a discharge line that ends well away from the wall, and a battery backup for the storm that takes the power out.
- Weeping tile replacement
Perforated pipe bedded in clear stone and wrapped in filter fabric replaces the clay tile or bare gravel that older houses in the township were built with.
- Window wells and grading
Roof water carried away from the wall, ground re-sloped for the first two metres, and window wells drained to the tile. Often the whole answer on moraine sand; always the first step everywhere else.
Not sure which one applies? That is what the free assessment is for.
Book a free assessmentCombinations
When a house needs two
Crack injection plus grading. The most common pair on the moraine: one leaking crack, and a downspout that has been feeding it for years. Injecting the crack without moving the downspout leaves the water looking for the next crack.
Interior system plus sump upgrade. Standard on lakeshore lots. The new drain collects more water than the old pump was sized for, so the pit and pump are replaced with the system, and a battery backup is added because the water comes with the storms.
Exterior on one wall, interior on the rest. Where a deck or a driveway makes one side undiggable, or where only one wall is block. The two systems meet at the corner and drain to the same sump.
What we do not do is sell all six. If a house needs a downspout extension and nothing else, the assessment says so and we leave.