Virginia Basement Waterproofing, Foundation and Basement Waterproofing in Virginia, Serving Northern, Northwestern and Southeastern VA | Waterproofing Articles

The Value of Not Waiting!

January 18, 2009

When it comes to home maintenance there is always the trade off of spending the money now or waiting. Last spring at about 6 am, after a particularly long all night thunder storm, I received a somewhat distressed call from my best friend. Maybe you live in a house like his. It is an older home that in recent years he has remodeled putting 40 to 50K into moving walls, installing hardwood, drywall, painting, crown molding, new deck, new kitchen and plans to redo the baths and bedrooms. It will be an added value of about 100K when completed.

Now there is one area for which he holds no plans to remodel… the basement. Fully 1/3 of his homes floor space is in the basement but that brings me back to the 6 am call. He had been up by then for about 3 hours. The storm had knocked out the power about 10 pm the night before and when it didn’t come back on he decided to check the basement. Now what would possess him to do that? Well, like a lot of basements out there his has everything sitting up on blocks to keep things dry if the power goes out in a storm. Usually this would only require a few hours of wet vac work to clean up after the power comes back on. That morning was different because first… the power was predicted to be out for the next 2 days and second… we had received nearly 8 inches of rain already and it was still coming down. His blocks were not high enough and the water in the basement continued to rise. He needed a generator and he needed it now because without power his sump pump was not helping at all. I started making phone calls to my usual resources but found that my friend was not the only person looking for a generator to run their sump pump and these other folks beat us to the punch. We finally found a rental center in another town where we could rent one at about a third of the cost to buy it.

When the water was cleaned up and the power restored his plan was to not let this happen again. However, those generators are expensive, the basement has remained dry, and now it is only a few months away to our storm season and he still has no generator. Even worse is that even if he gets a generator, he still cannot use the basement for living space. The basement is too damp and cool and the pump might quit working and he may be away when the next storm comes, not being able to react to water on the floor. So, for now, everything remains on new, higher blocks.

As explained in other blogs, the walls remain damp and continue to break down over time. We have already replaced part of his sill plate from rot. Investing thousands of dollars in the house and neglecting the foundation does two very negative things. First… the value of the remodel is offset by the negativity of having a basement that is damp and periodically floods. Second… if the basement was dry and finished it would add far more value than any of the upgrades he has already done or plans to do. A guaranteed dry waterproofed basement will sell; a wet one in this market will not.

Don’t put off having your basement waterproofed. If it has flooded before it will flood again. Cracks in the foundation walls don’t go away. Re-grading the dirt around the house is only a temporary fix to re-direct water. If it has leaked, it will leak again. Call us today for your free inspection and evaluation. Call Jon at 703-866-0535 or 540-974-2755 or email me at Jon@NVBWS.com.

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The Value of Not Waiting!