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Exterior Basement Waterproofing: When Water Attacks
When a flood attacks the outside of your basement, even the smallest crack in your cellar's defenses can turn the battle into your foundation's Waterloo. No pun intended. OK, maybe just a little. Point being, some events are just too overwhelming to trust to a traditional interior basement waterproofing effort.
Exterior basement waterproofing is, let there be no doubt, a huge undertaking. Regardless of exactly what techniques the waterproofers use, it's going to start with them excavating the earth out from around your basement. A lot of you just tuned out, envisioning a huge backhoe in your yard scraping mud away from your foundation. It's a scary thought!
As scary as it is, however, it's a necessity for many homes. If the hydrostatic pressure on the outside of your basement walls gets too high, it can force cracks in your foundation that will get water into the cellar even if it's been recently waterproofed on the inside. Exterior basement waterproofing brings the strength right to where the fight is actually taking place -- the outside wall of your basement.
Kinds of Exterior Waterproofing
There are several different varieties of external basement waterproofing. In the most basic kind, the basement wall is sprayed down with some form of waterproofing agent and then the dirt around the basement is replaced. It's the least expensive, most common, and least powerful way of protecting your cellar walls.
The next step is essentially wrapping your entire basement wall in plastic. It's a massive undertaking, but it adds extraordinary strength and watertightness to your basement walls. It's also a pretty expensive process -- actually more so than the next option, which many people prefer for their homes.
One common alternative to strengthening the basement wall is so install footer drains all the way around the home. Acting much like a solid set of gutters, these footer drains collect the rain that pours down the outside wall of the home and gently diverts it dozens of feet away, usually into a garden or a storm drain. Footer drains will generally handle any problem except a rising water table or a water main break near your basement walls.
Don't Wait Until The Damage is Done
Basements that need exterior waterproofing are already in danger -- there's water forcing it's way inside even through the standard interior waterproofing job. That's serious stuff; the potential for hazardous mold is secondary to the potential that your home's entire foundation could split and crumble.
When that happens, you're looking at a whole different level of expense. Contractors will have to come out, lift your entire home off of it's foundation, and repair the foundation in place under it. There's no amount of basement waterproofing that could match the kind of expense that will invoke, so it's much better to call the basement waterproofers while you still have a chance.