If you have a finished basement, it may be hard to tell the difference between a poured concrete or stone foundation. But, it's usually not hard to tell at all. Look in the basement; if you see stones you have a stone foundation, if you see smooth cement walls you have poured concrete. It becomes tricky when people do renovations or rehabs on a house. They'll put in a layer of mortar over the stones...

This is actually a case study for a residential elevator pit that was being put in by a high-end builder/remodeler in Newton, MA. He had put in a home addition behind where he had put in the elevator pit, which is slightly below the basement. He told me it was leaking where the floor of the elevator pit meets the foundation. We went in and injected a polymer resin by drilling into the seam, putting...

We got a call from a woman in Needham, MA who bought a house a month or two ago. She had a crack off the foundation window in the basement. I asked her all the normal questions that I ask in order to get a good idea if it is structural or not: Does it leak? How wide is it? Does it go at a great angle or a slight angle? Upstairs are there any...

Foundation needing repair at 25 Perkins Ave. in Hampton Beach New Hampshire. There are two main areas and then touch up needed on the side of the foundation.  

It's warm outside and people are watering their lawns on a regular basis. Can a rigorous watering cycle cause water in the basement? Well, sometimes it doesn't even have to be rigorous. We have already gotten a couple of calls, one from Dedham and one from Shrewsbury, where people are turning on their irrigation systems, it hadn't rained, and people are calling and saying they have water coming in the basement. There are pre-existing conditions....

Spring is here after a very long winter, but while the flowers are blooming and birds are chirping there can still be hidden water problems in your basement. Especially in the spring and summer when there hasn't been any rain. We get calls from homeowners who tell us that the corners of their basement are damp or there are little puddles of water. They want us to fix the problem. There are two things that...

Before we get into the purpose of a sump pump first we should talk about why you need one. We see a lot of basements where a sump pump should be installed. When you have cracks in the basement floor and water is coming up, or if you have water coming in from all around from all four sides you might consider putting a sump pump in. Or, if your ground is all clay, there...

Here's a video of the water leak in 169a Chapel Street Leicester MA. You can see the floor behind it. For quality basement waterproofing, contact A1 Foundation Crack Repair.

It almost looked like a murder scene. They took pictures, and they were so great I posted them. The homeowners were telling me they had water coming in from little dimples in the foundation walls; I knew they were the tie rods. They sent me pictures and the leaking water looked almost red, like blood. But, it was really the tie-rods that were leaking. Tie-rods are metal rods that go right through the foundation. Water...

With all this wacky weather we've had this year in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the soil has done a lot of freezing and thawing that doesn't bode too well for concrete. But it doesn't just affect concrete, but block and stone walls as well. You have to remember that most soils retains water to begin with, they're moist. But then we have the rain, snow, melt, and freeze. Then the rain, snow, melt and...