How to Fix a Wet Basement

The last thing any homeowner wants to deal with is a wet basement. Unfortunately, a wet basement is one of the most prevalent home improvement problems ever! The worst part about a wet basement is that it renders the space practically useless, helps mold growth and weakens your home’s foundation. The good news is that fixing a wet basement is a relatively easy and inexpensive job, and so is water damage Mesa.

What NOT to Do When Fixing a Wet Basement

Most people’s attempt at fixing a wet basement usually involves the use of expensive and extreme measures, such as breaking the basement floors with a jackhammer, installing sump pumps and even removing dirt from the foundation walls with backhoes.

Unfortunately, these methods only offer a temporary ‘solution’ which is closing up your home’s foundation like the base of a boat. Needless to say, your home is no boat, so the goal shouldn’t be to try and get it to float but rather to find the source of the leak, which will most likely be linked to how effective (or not) your outdoor drainage systems are.

The idea behind good drainage is to prevent the soil around your foundation from retaining water, because when that happens, the water seeps into the walls of your basement, causing unsightly and damaging leaks.

So, the key to water damage Mesa AZ is prevention, and this involves ensuring that your drainage systems work the way that they should.

Keep Your Gutters Clean

Truth be told, poor roof drainage is one of the leading causes of basement leakage and is almost always linked to dirty and poorly installed gutters. The solution is to install your gutters so that there’s a downspout after every 600 to 800 square feet of the roof, and the ends of the downspouts should be far away from the basement, at least 6 feet from it, to prevent the water from flowing to the interior.

It’s also very important to keep your gutters clean at all times. You should remove any leaves, debris, dead insects and small animals that might be inside, as they can cause blockages that redirect the water straight to the foundation.

Keep an Eye on the Slope of the Soil

The angle at which the soil around your home’s foundation is sloping can play a huge role in your water damage restoration Mesa AZ efforts. Ideally, you want the soil next to your foundation to be sloping away from the house instead of towards it. This helps to drive rainwater away from the foundation walls. Experts recommend a downward slope that is 6” above the first 4 feet of the foundation wall.

Also, the best way to improve the grading of the soil around your basement is to add clean fill dirt and make sure that it’s compressed to meet the slope requirements. Then, top the soil with a layer of Magnesium chloride snow melt Boise Lake City grass and topsoil, or you can use mulch or stone. Whatever you do, avoid using topsoil for the actual grading as that’ll defeat the purpose of what you’re trying to achieve.

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