Watch This Before Waterproofing Your Basement

Roger looks at the challenges presented when waterproofing a basement.

We'll be visiting Back To Basement to see Rubi's basement conversions and look at concrete waterproofing, sump pumps and treating wet basement walls and flooding.

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#WaterproofBasement #DampCellar #Tanking

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[vinnysurti]

Over the past couple of years I have genuinely learned more from Roger than anyone else! We appreciate all the content Thank you 🙏🏽

[jdaveyhome]

I've watched dozens of videos to help decide what to do about my 90 year old basement. Most are advertisement of some commercial product. This is by far the most informative and complete discussion of water management in a basement. Thanks so much!

[disklamer]

I would like to add that understanding and directing drainage around the foundation is extremely helpful. Clay around your foundation will be forever soaked, so that is a problem, light turf soil not so much. Coarse sand allows more flow. Fine sand densely packed against the wall creates a barrier. Gravel at the bottom helps runoff. You can use gravel trenches as buffers. Relatively simple groundwork with basic materials used strategically can do a lot for moving water away from your structure.

[rmakkinc]

When you think about the wall construction fundamentals, you have a lot of 'layers'. The outside wall for protection against bulk water and to protect the insulation from UV, mechanical damage and bugs. You have the cavity, for draining and drying. You have the four control layers (thermal, vapor, air, water). On the inside/warm side you have the structure, for sheer and keeping things upright. When building a basement, people throw these fundamentals out of the windows and have complete faith in a 'waterproof' concrete wall and floor. No wonder things go wrong so often...
Like you said in the video, try to waterproof the outside and apply some kind of drainage plain (like the dimple drainage board), to have it more like a typical wall construction, as I explained earlier.
Some general advise regarding basements:
- Don't use traditional building materials, like wood studs and drywall, in a basement due to the higher moisture. These organic materials tend to rot and mold more easily.
- Instead use metal studs, foam insulation, proper vapor barriers, paperless drywall, synthetic baseboards, and pvc flooring.
- If you insulate from the inside, try to make a ventilated wall cavity, to reduce humidity and dry any damp.
- Grading around the house must slope away from the house, to reduce hydrostatic pressure against the basement wall.
- And monitor the humidity levels inside the basement.

[TheStevenWhiting]

Our old friend used to build houses many years ago with his business partner. He is very good. This one day however they were digging foundations for it and were having a break when the neighbour came out. He asked "Will your work affect my basement office?" They said with surprise "What!?" No one had told them in planning that the house next door had a basement and that most of the houses in that street did. They had to adjust their digging and go down deeper and obviously support the wall where nexts doors basement was. That could of ended badly.

[hamzah]

I'm not a builder but I really appreciate the time and effort you gift to make these fantastic videos. Thanks

[plumberparts]

I am not even thinking of building a basement....and If I did I'd whatsapp Roger to do it...and yet... *_here I am_* 😂

[ewokorgy]

Man i wish this guy was my grandpa. This is the type of inteligence i respect the most, practical usefull knowledge.

[andyman]

spot on with this description i have fitted 2 of these with the sump pumps and still working ok to this day the one it was raining hard and the cellar was flooding badly and we didn't have the correct fitting for the waste supplied by the company we were about an inch before it flooded totally thank god my neighbour plumber had it in his van and the builder drove to his house to pick it up problem solved and its been 10 years and no problems reported

[MrSparkyAprilia]

I've just finished building our house, and we've put a basement in, which is part of the reason went for a Polar Wall ICF building. So far so good and zero moisture down there! Also helped having UFH and MVHR to keep the condensation at bay!

[Orchardman]

We have Georgian (1805) house with a cellar. It is built on the edge of a flood plain with a hill on the other side. We get ground water flooding about 15cm deep in the cellar a couple of times each year and generally it drains within 3 hours after flooding. We assist that with a sump pump. Not a major problem. When the river floods above the banks it saturates the groundwater and the cellar floods about waist deep, we keep a 3 inch petrol pump handy to handle that infrequent event. When they built the house they knew about the floods hence no real damage is caused to the structure.

[PongoXBongo]

Interesting to hear him call sump pumps a remedial solution. They're both code requirements in most US basements, along with drainage systems. Then again, they have houses older than our country over there. ;)

[johncranna]

It's good to see you also having the same view as me about letting the moisture/water get in through an existing basement wall, collecting behind the Newtonite type layer and catching it in a recess around the base of wall with a french drain type pipe which takes it to a sump to be pumped out. I never like the idea of tanking the inside surface of a wall trying to hold the water pressure back as you only need one small imperfection, especially lower down where the hydrostatic pressure is greatest. If you are doing a new build with concrete walls then it does not matter how good the waterproofing concrete itself is, you will never get water entering through a concrete wall or slab. Like you said at beginning, it can over top the wall, or it comes through the junction of the base to the wall or the junction in the wall. Preventing water coming in at the base/wall junction (and you will always have to have a junction/joint here) is done by the use of a plastic water bar that you put either on the outer face or in the middle of the joint with half in the base part and the other half in the wall. The principle is that it makes the water path incredibly long and due to all the ribs, the concrete actually contracts and forms a seal. You talk about the walls being poured in one continuous pour, but I was always brought up to have movement/contraction joints at 6m otherwise you get drying out/contraction cracks in the wall. That is how underground reservoirs are constructed. I'm a structural engineer by the way!!

[llCarpentry_Joinery]

I used to work for a preservation company and we do basement waterproofing and yes there’s a lot of things to know and main company we used was Delta and Newton

[lonsdale]

It’s great to listen to someone explain it like yourself better than the professionals could ever do cheers mate Diamond block

[engr]

Best lecture it dicusses techniques people find agter many years of experience. The issues he is mentioning are so common and after watching this, he videos are wel researched, well edited and save time money and hassle after watching his videos

[nigeld]

I don’t even have a basement, but I was still very interested to watch this. It definitely doesn’t seem like a DIY job, but as with all these projects it’s very important to build up your knowledge before embarking on it, so as to ensure you don’t end up getting some rogue traders in doing the work! Happy to volunteer my help digging if it’s in the south?

[moutrap]

Very accurate video, the number of house having water issues because of misplaced french drain must be staggering. While everything is dug up, putting the french drain a foot lower is very easy and makes all the difference but most people installing it really don't know.

[ads]

I'd help dig. Worth it for the education. Serious too!

[rubikasuto]

Hi Roger, great to see our work illustrated in your video, I feel privileged to have been part of your channel, looking forward to seeing you up north,