Exterior Waterproofing Excavation: Worth It or Money Pit
Monday, August 6th, 2012
When you have water coming into your basement, you want to take care of it as fast and efficiently as possible. The most obvious answer is to try and fix this leakage from the outside, by installing exterior waterproofing.
This option though is obtrusive, and could be severly destructive of your porch, deck, landscaping, driveways, sidewalk, and air conditioning units. After the excavation is done, drainage tile is installed. This drainage tile must be kept clean and clear, which is hard to do after it is the excavation is filled back in. With all of the work that's involved with excavation heavy waterproofing, it can become quite costly.
Once the exterior waterproofing is done, the dirt must be filled back in. This poses another problem with excavation style waterproofing. Dirt that is filled back in will likely not be compacted well. Dirt that isn't compacted properly will allow water to flow down in the soil and into the walls of the house. If this system fails, how does one repair it? By having to excavate again, causing another large mess and causing the soil to not be compacted anymore.
A more cost effective and less invasive alternative to excavation style waterproofing is an interior drainage system. An interior drainage system, like WaterGuard is a more cost effective alternative to excavating your lawn, and WaterGuard has multiple advantages over exterior waterproofing.
When the WaterGuard Basement Waterproofing System installation begins, the perimeter of the floor is removed. This process is used on the floor only - the footing and foundation are not damaged by this process. If you have block foundation walls, weep holes are drilled into each core of each block so that the water contained within the hollow cores of the wall is continually drained away.
Clean gravel is laid down on the bottom of the trench, and WaterGuard is laid on top. After more gravel is laid on top, concrete is laid back down on top of the system, it's smoothed over and the area is cleaned.
Because the system sticks up above the floor about an inch, dirt and small objects from the floor can't get in and clog it. And since it is not sitting in the soil and is sitting on top of gravel, it doesn't clog.
If you're interested in a FREE ESTIMATE for WaterGuard or any other Thrasher system, give us a call at 1-800-827-0702.
