Where is the Water Coming From?
Finished Basements
I received a call from a woman the other day looking for help figuring out where the water was coming from. She had a 30 year old home with a poured concrete basement and puddles of water forming near the back wall. The basement was finished with both walls and carpet, making it difficult to tell where the water was coming from. She had had several people in who told her they thought is was coming up from the floor or the floor-wall joint. She wanted another opinion.
What I asked her to do was to look at the outside of the basement walls above grade. Foundation wall cracks almost always go all the way to the top, and they can be seen on the outside. If they don't go through to the outside, there will be no path for water to come in, and no leak. She texted me several photos and it was clear from these that there were no wall cracks. And we got lucky.
The lucky part is that there were no window wells on this wall. Usually, the corner of the window well is at or below grade, and it can be difficult to tell if there is a crack coming off the corner. Sometimes you can still see it, or you can dig down a bit and find the crack or no crack. But most of the time you can't do this. Window wells account for a larger than average number of cracks, given the proportion of linear footage they occupy around the perimeter of the foundation. They represent weak spots in the foundation wall, and so when shrinkage and settling occur, the wall cracks there first, relieving any stress elsewhere along the wall.
Given that there were no wall cracks, I concluded that the highest likelihood was that the water was coming up from the floor or the floor wall joint, and she should open up those areas first. If this happens a lot, she may need a sump pump and/or interior perimeter drainage to manage the water leak. That can be difficult in a finished basement, but it is far worse to leave the water inside the house unmanaged, allowing mold to form and materials to rot. I referred her on to an interior drainage guy, Michael Albert with Premier Basement Waterproofing.
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