The CrackDaddy and his "crack" team of water remediation experts do a lot of repairs on old homes, especially stone foundations, but with newer construction, homeowners get to enjoy a pristine basement for a number of years before they end up with basement water issues. That's why it can be quite horrifying when a basement water leak happens the first time.
Narrator: It’s time once again for the “Crack Man Podcast” hosted by A1 Foundation Crack Repair. I’m Darren Kincaid here with the Crack Daddy himself, Adam Tracy. Adam and The Crack Man Rich have over 30 years’ experience in the construction industry. Rich as over 25 years as the president and founder of A1 Foundation Crack Repair. This podcast provides expert basement waterproofing, concrete repair, and preventative maintenance tips for homeowners and businesses. A1 Foundation’s valuable insight will help avert a disastrous flood within the basement, health problems associated with water infiltration, and protect your biggest investment….your home.
Narrator: The topic of today’s podcast: I’ve never had water in my basement. Why now? So, Adam not all foundations are created equally and you’ve probably seen some bad ones as A1’s civil engineer on staff. You have a cautionary tale to share with our listeners about a crumbling foundation, right?
Adam: You’re absolutely right. And you know, it’s a story that we hear unfortunately quite often. We get a phone call coming in, and they’ve lived in the house for 15, 20, 30 years, never had a drop of water and all of a sudden we have an event. And here we go, they’re getting water in there, and that is the essentially “breaking of the dam” for water coming in and it never a fun situation for a homeowner.
Whether it’s the first day you live in the house or the 10,000th day you lived in the house, water in the basement can never be fun. We had a particular case in Arlington just over the past week. The homeowner had lived there for 24 years, and they had a handful of cracks in the foundation walls and in the floor that they just kind of ignored for the past couple decades and never thought that they were an issue. And for 24 years of living there, they never were, they were, well, just there and kind of background noise and nobody had any concerns with it. But unfortunately, we’ve had a historic rain cycle here in New England, and particularly, Massachusetts area, and a lot of issues have started to rear their heads in homes that have never had issues before. So in this particular case where they had floor and wall cracks that will, again, for decades, untouched and no issues whatsoever, they had water coming in both and there are actually two different reasons why water would be coming in both. One reason is for the wall cracks, is that we had a tremendous amount of rain in a very short period of time. For this particular home, they had two roof lines coming together. And when we had four to six inches of rain falling over a 24 to 36-hour period, the amount of rain that was coming off of the roof actually went over the gutters, because it was too much for the gutters to handle, and now you have the entire area of the roof combined into smaller spots in the foundation. And now with these cracks, where happen to line up fairly close to where the two roof lines came together. You had a lot of rain coming in a very short period of time and now it’s waters coming in here.
So, they did everything right. They had gutters on there, they had landscaping where the grass and landscaping was moving away from the foundation wall, but it still doesn’t matter. And even though this crack was fairly innocuous for the entire life of this home ownership, it eventually leaked. And what happens with this particular leak is that the only thing that’s separating water from coming in or not coming in is usually the dirt and mud that gets packed in the outside of the crack when it splits open, and over the years, rain, ice, freezing, thawing, it will eventually start to kind of get rid of the dirt and mud that’s packed in there. And then you add in 4 to 6 inches of rain over a very short period of time and all of a sudden it starts coming in.
The other issue in this particular home was that the water was coming up from the floor. Now usually two very different paths of origin in terms of where the water’s coming from. In this case because we’ve had so much rain over an extended period of time, we’re talking three weeks of rain, no, almost every day. The water table is higher than it’s ever been for this area at this time of year. With the compounding of the short period burst of rain with a rising water table, the water actually forced its way under the house pushing up through the floor cracks and causing the basement to take on water through the floor cracks and also where the floor and the wall met.
For this particular house and many houses like this, the solutions were to repair the cracks so that this doesn’t happen. I know it sounds so simple, but it doesn’t matter how long it’s been dry, eventually, the crack will give way to water. Well, in this case, it took kind of a unique circumstance of events in the middle of the Summer, where we don’t usually get as much rain over a long period of time for it to happen. Luckily, we were able to get out there, repair the cracks and solve the situation and we’re able to keep their basement dry through the continued rains, after all these happened. And they’re very happy and don’t have to worry about anything for hopefully another 24 plus years.
Narrator: All right. Well, excellent information Adam. Thanks for explaining how a basement foundation can suddenly start leaking when it never has before.
Narrator: If you have a basement water problem and think you need a professional, or, if you’d like more information on foundation crack repair and basement waterproofing topics, please visit A1FoundationCrackRepair.com or call Rich at (866) 929-3171. Or you can email Rich at info@a1foundationcrackrepair.com. Thanks for listening and keep that basement dry.