There are very few things in a homeowner's life that are more
horrible than a flooded basement. Even if it's just clean water
backing up through the drains, it can do a great deal of damage. And
if the flood happens to contain sewage or mud, the devastation is
just that much worse. There's no easy way to clean up the mess. You
see people on TV news who, following disasters, are shoveling the
mud and muck from their homes. Things kept in the basement are
ruined, and that may well include a furnace and a water heater as
well as laundry appliances and furniture. Basement flooding is a
disaster you want to keep from happening to you at all costs.
We'd lived in our home less than a year when my husband woke me up
one morning telling me that we had water in the basement. We had a
newborn at the time, and I'd been up most of the night, so I told
him a little water was no big deal and asked him to let me sleep. He
persisted by telling me that the water in the basement was at least
3 feet deep. That got me out of bed. Boxes of our things were spread
out on the basement floor, because we hadn't gotten around to
unpacking them yet, and they included my entire library of around
500 books. There was nothing we could do but have the neighbor back
his garbage truck up to the door and throw all of this stuff in.
In addition, paneling had buckled, our pool table crashed to the
floor, and our washer and dryer were ruined. We had thought we were
protected. After all, someone had painted the walls with
waterproofing paint, and no one had warned us there was a problem.
The walls weren't where our problem lay, though. We had water coming
up through the floor drains, the toilet, and even the stand pipe for
the washer. This necessitated having a large hole dug in the
basement floor (yes, it was cement and tile), and a pumping system
installed. It was a lot of mess, work, and expense. It did, however,
fix the problem.
The moral of this story is that you need to find out about water
problems before buying a house. If you have a home with a wet
basement, you need to do whatever it takes to fix the problem. A
good waterproofing contractor will be able to tell you what needs to
be done.
