When the outside of your basement is attacked by flood, the smallest crack in your cellar’s defenses can even turn the battle into your foundation into a real problem. This is because some events are just too overwhelming to hope on a traditional interior basement waterproofing effort.
Let there be no doubt about exterior basement waterproofing, it is a huge undertaking. It’s going to begin with excavating the earth out from around your basement regardless of the techniques that will be used. Envisioning a huge backhoe in your yard scraping mud away from your foundation.
However, it’s a necessity for many homes as scary as it is. Cracks can be forced in your foundation that will get water into the cellar even though it’s been recently waterproofed on the inside if the hydrostatic pressure on the outside of your basement walls gets too high. With Exterior basement waterproofing, the strength is brought right to where the fight is actually taking place — the external wall of your basement.
Kinds of Exterior Waterproofing
Several different varieties of external basement waterproofing exist. In the simplest kind, some form of waterproofing agent is sprayed down the basement wall and then the dirt around the basement is changed. It’s the most common, least expensive, and least powerful way of protecting your cellar walls.
The next step is basically involves using plastic to wrap your entire basement wall. It adds extraordinary strength and water tightness to your basement walls, although it’s a huge undertaking. It’s also expensive — actually more than the next option, which many people prefer for their homes.
Installing footer drains all the way around the home is a common alternative to strengthen the basement walls. These footer drains act much like solid set of gutters by collecting the rain that pours down the outside wall of the home and gently directs it dozens of feet away, usually into a storm drain or a garden. Generally, footer drains will manage any problem with the exception of a rising water table or a water main breakage near the basement walls.
Don’t Wait Until The Damage is Done
Basements that require exterior waterproofing are already in danger – water is forcing its way even through the standard interior waterproofing job into the basement. That’s critical; the possibility for hazardous mold cannot be compared to the potential that the entire foundation of your home could split and crumble.
You’re staring at a whole different level of expense when that occurs. Contractors will come out and lift your entire home off of its foundation, and fix the foundation in under it. The kind of expense that will be invoked by that adventure cannot be compare to any amount of basement waterproofing. Thus, it’s much better to reach the basement waterproofers while you still can.
Call a basement waterproofing crew immediately and get your home checked out if you know or even suspect that this might be happening to your home. If you don’t need them, great! But if you do, you’ll be glad you called them when you did.
