Dry out Basement Gym Flooring with a Dehumidifier - Reader situation / Question

Every spring and summer it feels like similar questions come into the site. One of the more common ones is about how to dry out a basement after flooding. This particular reader asked a more specific question about the gym flooring he/she had in their basement. They asked if a dehumidifier is the right way to dry out a wet basement gym floor:
The answer is: Partly.

As I've mentioned before in several posts, one being this year after the massive floods in Rhode Island during March 2010, a dehumidifier can easily deal with moisture in the air, but it's not very good at dealing with puddles.
Should I use AC or Heat to dry up a wet basement?
If you're basement has truly flooded and have had it pumped out then you're working with a good starting point. Many professional flood cleaning companies use high powered submersible pumps in addition too large fans, dehumidifiers, and the heat from your furnace. That's right, adding heat from a furnace can help to break up the puddled moisture by helping it to warm up and evaporate into the air - the dehumidifier can easily handle the humidity and moisture.

This can go for the gym flooring. Hopefully you have a tile system (these are the easiest and most cost effective way of doing it.) and can take it apart. I know, no one wants too, but when there's moisture trapped under the tiles, or between the seems it's easier to dry everything if it's all taken up. Looking for Basement Flooring?

I'd recommend stacking them with cloth or washcloths in between to draw out any moisture. These stacks should be put in your furnace room, or close too it. Turn on the furnace and the dehumidifier and let the room heat up. Eventually the moisture will come out on it's own. This will also be helpful as you tackle the rest of the area that might still be wet.

If you have a question about your basement that you'd like to have answered, or have a situation you need help with, feel free to drop me a line, leave a comment, or visit the Pioneer Basement Help Forums to ask your question. If the question is good I'll share it here on my blog with the answer for my readers. Keep Dry!


Related Reading and Links
Read about the Top 6 Basement Mistakes that contractors and homeowners make. See what other readers have asked in Safe'n'Dry Basement Blog's Reader Questions Section
Ask Pioneer Basement a question Directly on Pioneer Basement's Help Forums!
Basement Waterproofing - So you never have to deal with it again!

Grate Drain vs. Floor Seepage - protecting against wet basements

One of the popular advantages of GrateDrain over other french drains is that it is specifically designed and installed to protect against floor seepage.

Floor seepage is when water pushes its way up through the floor of the basement. Cracks and separations can often make problems worse than they would be normally. However the problem that is causing the basement to become wet is the fact that water mass builds up under the floor of the basement.

As water builds, pressure is put on the underside of the concrete floor. As water seeks the path of least resistance, holes and separations are the first choice - but they're not always available - so water finds other ways in. The most common area that sees seepage is the perimeter around the basement; the gap between the wall and the basement floor.

Pressure can cause puddling in the middle of the floor, flooding, and wet spots around the perimeter of the basement.

How GrateDrain targets both, and Fixes them

GrateDrain, the french drain in question, has a bigger advantage of having holes on both sides of it. The holes are large and can accommodate large volumes of water. This is key to keep the volume of water under control under the basement floor. This is most importantly during a series of rain storms. The Grate Drain is installed so that the water drains into it inches before coming in contact with the bottom of the floor. This keeps the volume from building and building to the level of the footing and the floor.

This is important for a few reasons
1.) Moisture and water aren't touching the floor. This keeps puddling and floor crack seepage under control.
2.) It keeps water under the floor from jumping up on the footer and through the floor/wall gap.
3.) Volume is less shocking because it's under control most of the time - this is important for your drainage to be affective and also to increase the life of your sump pump.

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Related Reading and Links
Read about the Top 6 Basement Mistakes that contractors and homeowners make. See what other readers have asked in Safe'n'Dry Basement Blog's Reader Questions Section
Ask Pioneer Basement a question Directly on Pioneer Basement's Help Forums!

April Showers – Getting the jump on your wet basement.

This is the time of year to do something about the basement.

Water, mold, mildew, radon; whatever the issue is in your basement, getting the jump on spring will save you time, money, and a pained back.

Even if it is occasional water, “every now and then” – this proves that there is a way into your basement from the outside! Doesn’t that bug you? You know you have the chance to see water, and what’s been done about it? “Well it’s been dry all winter”…but that doesn’t mean that it will stay this way. Every Basement, regardless of age, has the potential to flood…that’s a fact.

I can’t tell you how many people on the phone, almost daily, have finally said, “This is the year I’m going to do something about it.”

Standing Water, Leaks, and Seepage
Excess moisture in the basement is bad for the home and it’s bad for your health. It jacks up the price you pay for AC/Heating and it can harbor bacteria and support mold growth. If these aren’t enough of a reason to fix the “occasional water in the basement” then here’s more:

• Excess moisture/water/dampness in basements of buildings make it 75% more likely that the occupants of that building will become ill.  
• Damp conditions down stairs can help support mold growth upstairs.
• Air flows up from the basement, so if there are smells created by the conditions in the basement you can bet that they’ll emerge upstairs.

Pick your motivation! You want a place to watch football, a place for the kids, finally a place to store all your files and junk that it won’t get ruined – keep that picture in your mind and use that to motivate you into correcting the conditions of your basement before the rains in spring.

You CAN have a dry basement, but you have to choose to.

Related Reading and Links

Read about the Top 6 Basement Mistakes that contractors and homeowners make.

Ask Jacob A question Directly on Pioneer Basement's Help Forums!

Sump pumps aren’t the only things that solve wet basements

Having blogged about basement waterproofing for well over 2 years now, I’ve come across plenty of misunderstandings about sump pumps and their place in the waterproofing “solution bag.”

Many customers call, thinking that all they need is a sump pump, when the majority of the cases, it couldn’t be further from the actual solution.

The sump pump is a mechanical device that sits on the front lines of any moisture issue in the basement. It is designed to be the easiest, quickest, and most volume displacing method of getting water out from underneath your basement floor. Sump pumps are a great answer if all you have is ground water coming in contact with your basement floor. However, it’s very rare that this would be the ONLY way that water was trying to get into your basement.

There are two other ways that water typically comes into the basement (and I’ve talked at length about these): inward migration of moisture through the foundation walls and water coming in through the gap between the footing and foundation wall.

Unless the moisture and liquid water somehow only get diverted to underneath the basement floor, and you experience absolutely not seepage around the floor/wall joint, then it’s possible that the sump pump might be the only solution you need. But 99% of the time, the sump pump is only part of the solution.



Other solutions to consider:

Interior Drainage

A subfloor drainage system can help to capture most of the water coming through the footing / wall joint that a sump pump alone would miss. Interior drainage is connected to the sump location and can in fact help the sump pump to deal with more volume then just the sump alone. Drainage at the other end of the basement can help to ferry water through it’s channels to the pump, where as in the pump would have to work twice as hard to reach the same water.

Water, a natural level, will always seek its own level. As a sump pump works it lowers the level of water near it, however, the water further away is still at a slightly higher level. This creates a shift and the water will rock to level itself out naturally. If drainage was present, the water could uniformly be removed faster and with less resistance.


Foundation Wall Vapor Barrier

Vapor Barriers have had people confused for years now. Correctly attaching a vapor barrier directly to the foundation wall will drastically limit humidity and the level of moisture that can break into the basement via the foundation walls. Vapor barrier can be directly connected to interior drainage and any moisture or liquid water that is trapped by it, will find its way to the drain and be directed to the sump pump basin.

One of the most common questions that I’ve received about Vapor Barrier is “Do I need it?”

The answer as I’ve stated before, is a strongly suggestive YES. It will help to completely address all the possible entry points of moisture into the basement, provide long term protection against wall leaks and wicking.

If you don’t use a vapor barrier, I wouldn’t suggest finishing off the basement until you did.

Spring Time = wet, mud, drenched, soaking, lawn, soil, driveway, basement time.

With spring’s arrival comes the relief that we’re no longer in winter, summer is around the corner, and change is happening.

For many people that I deal with on a normal basis, however, it’s the time of dread. With the rains in New England comes a dedicated amount of time plugging holes, bailing, mopping, dry-vac-ing, soaking up, cleaning up, tearing down, and spending way too much intimate time with the water in their basement.

It’s a lot of stress, and for many, it’s so much stress that it literally keeps them up at night (I didn’t believe that line until I met a few in person who actually physically couldn’t sleep when it rained.)

Readers of this blog know that I work for a basement waterproofing company in Massachusetts that I’m very proud of. Readers also know that I try to make it easy for them to approach me with questions and problems. It’s personally hard for me to see people go through this Spring Time anguish when the rest of the world is seemingly on cloud 9 because of all the flowers, and picnics, and butterflies and all that lovey-dovey crap.

This Spring I’m urging everyone who reads this to call me, to email me, to join in the topics on the forums and to reach out and get help for these wet basement problems. It’s not fair to you to have to suffer through “dealing with it.” You don’t have to deal with it! You can save your knees, your back, your arms, and your hands from having to battle and fend off the seemingly endless stream of water that happens every spring in New England.

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Basement Remodeling: Pre-Finishing and Preparation steps.

Over the past few years I’ve seen more and more problems with wet basements and more and more of them are happening in fully finished basements. The homeowner in many cases stated “it was a dry basement, we’d never seen water until today” which is very true in most cases.

There are two facts about basements that we currently have to live with:

1.) All concrete will and can crack
2.) All basements will and eventually leak

These are two very hard things for most people to understand. We’re all in denial about bad choices that we’ve made in the past and not preparing your basement before you finish could be one that you could very well have to own in the near future.

The thing is that this lesson is totally preventable. Preparing your basement is much like prepping a patient for surgery. You can’t just throw them into the ER; you have to go through a series of steps before they’re ready.

With the basement, regardless of if you’ve ever seen water, water in its gas form (vapor) can travel through concrete quite easily. Airflow brings it into your home in your basement and then helps it to travel up into the home eventually. Increased amounts of humidity and an increase in a need to run you’re A/C are two signs that you might have a moisture control problem. There are other signs that you might come across as well such as condensation, puddle-ing, and damp walls.

Don’t think for a second because you’ve never had water on your floor that your basement won’t ever leak.

The first step in finishing your basement is to install a moisture control system that will reduce the amount of moisture vapor build up in the basement, protect from leaks and flooding and dehumidification to help circulate the air and filter it.

From here you’ll be working with a clean slate that’s protected and ready to be finished over.

Wet Basements in New England, CT, MA, RI: How water gets into your basement

It’s rainy weather like today’s (cloudy and raining all over Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts, I’m sure that Connecticut saw it earlier) that will eventually remind many homeowners how important having a dry basement is. Having a wet basement can be aggravating. Many people get down on their hands and knees to sop up water with sponges, buckets and wet-vacs.

The fact of the mater is having a wet basement isn’t your fault. It’s a design flaw in how basements are built. The good news is you can have someone inspect your basement, and install something that addresses these flaws head on.

Water can find it’s way through the space between the footing and wall:
When a wall is made the footing is poured first and left to dry. They form it around 2x4 in order to achieve a “dove tale” so the wall poured on top of it dries with part of it’s support inside of the footing. The problem is that the concrete can’t connect. If one object is dry, a wet concrete object can’t merge with it and become one solid piece. There’s a natural space left between the two objects. This space is an easy route for water to press through and find itself ether on your floor, underneath your floor, or wicking up your walls.

Water can settle under your concrete Floor:
Wet basements can also happen with water seeping up from underneath the floor. When a foundation’s walls are finished the Contractor “back-fills” or fills in the open areas with dirt, stone or gravel. Your floor of your basement rests on back fill. Depending on what was used for back fill it can be easy or hard for water to sit, build pressure, and find holes and gaps to seep up from. Cracks in the floor or the gap between the floor and the wall are the two most common areas this water shows itself.

Water can come through cracks in your foundation walls:
Cracks happen to all concrete eventually. There are many factors that can cause cracks in concrete but the one thing that can exploit these small tares in your walls is water. When it rains outside the soil soaks up the amount of water it can handle, the rest is left to fend for itself and find places to fill up. When water finds a crack in your wall it can “sense” the pressure difference in the basement and seeks to occupy the open space. Depending on the amount of water and pressure build up outside, the water can dribble, seep, or pour through cracks.

Addressing all three possibilities is the key to success:
Now the major issue is finding something that tackles all three, looks good, doesn’t interfere with your use of the basement, and protects you for the life of the house. The GrateDrain system by Grate Products LLC is that system. The combination of Wall Protection, Crack Repair, a Duel Channel drain to address both directions of water flow, and a GrateSump to relieve pressure under the floor and remove the water in the drains are the way to go.

The GrateDrain is designed to remove water from under the floor and defend against that water building up over time. With a solid wall in the middle of the drain it can separately address the water coming from the wall behind the wall protection and the water coming between the footing and the wall. The GrateSump, where the sump pump is installed, will add extra support for water build up under the floor at a deeper level as well as provide the exit strategy for the water in the drain.

The GrateDrain is a flawless, seamless, closed system to protect your basement from ever being wet again. Basements in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have been receiving help from Pioneer Basement for over 25 years (a GrateDrain Installer!). If you have a wet basement and need help, if you have dreams of finishing but need to get water under control, then look no further; Pioneer Basement is here to help.

For basement waterproofing, or wet basement help in CT, MA, or RI, call:
1-800-649-6140 or visit Pioneer Basement online: www.pioneerbasement.com

Water Coming in through the Foundation of the House.

This is the typical issue that people with wet basements have. Moisture/Water is coming directly through the foundation via a crack or puncture.

Punctures can happen from direct impact on the foundation wall, or through a very long process of micro-pores finally being connected via the concrete separations giving way.

Cracks are a common thing in many homes, especially older homes. Settlement, soil expansion and contraction, hydrostatic pressure, rapid cooling and drying of new concrete, or in the case of concrete block and brick, the mortar breaking up and dissipating.

The first step in correcting any foundation leaks that lead to a flooded basement is to formally address the foundation issues. Re-point the blocks or bricks, correct mortar issues, fill cracks, add FiberLock or Wall Anchoring systems (if one is needed) and then move onto the next step.

After the foundation is secure it’s time to waterproof the basement . Many people think that hydro-sealing the cracks is good enough to repair the crack and waterproof the basement. Sadly, after years of watching such repairs fail, it’s not. It’s a good temporary solution to get you safely to a permanent solution.

Installing an interior drain system in your basement is the only proven, permanent method to keep your basement dry. This will cover the addressed foundation, trap and redirect water to be properly drained and removed from the basement.

All foundations require an amount of water, especially in places like Texas, to stay stable, upright and without major incident. Concrete being naturally porous and absorbent, water will naturally find its way into concrete to fill the holes left behind by the drying process during the curing of the concrete walls.

Questions about your basement or foundation? Contact me on the Pioneer Basement Help Forums and Ask away. Don't forget to leave your comment here or to quote it in your forum posting.


Related Reading and Links

Read about the Top 6 Basement Mistakes that contractors and homeowners make.

Ask Pioneer Basement a question Directly on Pioneer Basement's Help Forums!