Waterproofing a basement

[SwampDonkey]

My experience here tell's me it's not happening. I suspect there are other factors at play, like surrounding soil drainage. A cap of sloped soil on the level ground only creates a cut trench around here from the drip line with our rainfall and just soaks in anyway. Sloped ground here at the house has no drip line, except one porch which deflects 6 feet away from foundation. This place is rock and gravel abundant. Only significant clay here is next to bedrock several feet down. The day after the snow leaves the lawn here you can drive a pickup over it. Some places that could be a month or two of slime. 

[Stephen1]

We just finished the new build with a foundation of ICF that is then coated with the "BlueSkin" rubberized poly that Bartender described. My foundation was dug to the bed rock then 2- 4" poly with socks laid in and then 18" of 1.5" clear stone tamped with the excavator. There is a natural V in the rock and it runs from my Log Cabin basement under the new house to the lake, I brought the poly out below the house level but above the lake. The footings were laid on the clear stone and all the water runs under the house. I laid sock covered 4" poly around the foundation with heavy landscaping felt then 1" clear stone for a foot cover on the felt, then sand for 3' then another 4" sock covered poly and then sand to grade. That is all sloped around the house towards the lake. I placed 1" clear stone 24" around  the  foundation so nothing will grow not to either foundation, Cabin or House.   I then installed gutters with downspouts running 6' away from the house. The log cabin does not have gutters because the snow will take them off, 12" pitch roof of steel, not much stays on it. It might be over kiln but nothing worse that a wet basement. So far it has stayed dry thru some torrential downpours that I watched rivers of water flowing past the house. My house is down hill 3' from the top of my driveway entrance.

[Don P]

Here's a good page. I think this would be allowed under fair use for this discussion. I'll plug the book "Graphic Guide to Frame Construction" Rob Thallon.



We have one unlicensed "builder" I've followed here 2 or 3 times and looking at that picture brought one of his recurrent thinking problems to mind. Do install gutters. Do not run the gutters into the foundation drains, that simply charges the perforated drains and causes flooding. Gutter drainage (storm drain) is in a solid drain out to daylight.

[kkcomp]

Here's a good page. I think this would be allowed under fair use for this discussion. I'll plug the book "Graphic Guide to Frame Construction" Rob Thallon.



We have one unlicensed "builder" I've followed here 2 or 3 times and looking at that picture brought one of his recurrent thinking problems to mind. Do install gutters. Do not run the gutters into the foundation drains, that simply charges the perforated drains and causes flooding. Gutter drainage (storm drain) is in a solid drain out to daylight.

Not from the same source but thats almost exactly the same drawing I gave to the builder.

[barbender]

 I will say, if you have a muskrat come up your drain and get in your basement, you won't forget it. They are ornery little son of a guns!

[SwampDonkey]

I'm not near muskrat habitat here, but plenty of mice that would like to get in. They will get into the wood pile out in the yard and chew the bark off the aspen firewood. I usually find a couple of grassy nests. :D

[barbender]

 When I was an avid snowmobiler, it wasn't unusual to come across a wandering muskrat. I don't know what would make them set off and leave the marshes in the middle of the winter, but there one would be in the snowmobile trail no where near water. They were VERY aggressive, if you slipped your throttle trying to get them to move they would come after you!😂😂 Ugly little mothers they are, especially coming at you with their big yellow teeth bared!

 Grandpa used to call me "muskrat ugly". I'm more offended by that as time goes on 😂

 Another fun Grandpa story- he told me when he was a boy, him and his dad would go visit an old Ojibwe woman that lived next to the bridge over the Mississippi. She lived the traditional life still. I asked what her name was? Grandpa said, "I don't know- she didn't speak any English. Her husband's last name was Necklace, so we just called her Mrs. Necklace."

 Grandpa said Mrs. Necklace had a big kettle where she boiled her fish nets. Then she had also trapped some muskrats. Grandpa said she just had them skun out and hung on a line to dry out. Grandpa said Mrs. Necklace offered him a piece of dried muskrat, which his gut reaction was, "no way!". But his Dad shot him a look that said, "enjoy your muskrat, son!"😂 So he ate it. I asked him, how was it? Grandpa said, "well it probably wouldn't have been that bad if it had some salt and pepper on it, but then you had that muskrat that still had it's eyeballs and those big yellow teeth!" I have half a mind to bring Grandpa some muskrat now!😂

 Grandpa had quite a few stories about Mrs. Necklace. The craziest one was about her son, Charlie. Charlie was actually adopted, and not by any normal means- Mrs. Necklace found him as an abandoned infant while out picking blueberries! Now I know this may sound unbelievable, but this was the reservation back in the 40's. 

 I remember when Grandpa was relating this story, my Aunt asked, "well how did they know she would find him out there?" Grandpa said, "They didn't. He was just abandoned. Probably a young girl had him and didn't know what to do so she left him out there. A bear probably would've ended up eating him if Mrs. Necklace wouldn't have found him." 😬

 Charlie grew up to be kind of a handful. He liked the liquor. Grandpa said the only English he ever heard Mrs. Necklace speak was the words, "White man bad! Make Charlie drunk!!" Grandpa said, "White man my butt, Charlie was doing just fine getting drunk on his own!"😂

 Grandpa said back then, a lot of the Indians would go to "Peyote parties" (it was pronounced pay-oat around here). Grandpa said in the old times someone would have a little toke and then have a vision, "but these dummies would smoke the whole thing, shoots they'd fall down and worship cars that was drivin' by."😂

 Anyways, Grandpa said one time Mrs. Necklace sent Charlie with some money into town to get some groceries. Instead Charlie ended up at a Peyote party. The next morning Grandpa said that Charlie showed up at their place, wild eyed and shirtless. Grandpa asked him what was wrong, he said, "I think I got married last night at a Peyote party, and I don't wanna be!". Well they couldn't do much for him in that regard, Grandpa said the last he saw of Charlie he was heading north still without a shirt😂

 Sorry if I got way of track, see what memories a little muskrat can evoke?☺️

[SwampDonkey]

Only rats I seen around buildings here was the real ones. A lot of houses had old cisterns here, rain water filled them. They had an overflow drain in the middle, a piece of pipe out of the floor upward about a foot from the top of the cistern walls. Too small a hole for a rat. Have found a few rats floating in the cistern when I was a kid. A rat could easily get in around a rock wall of them old houses or chew a hole through a sill. :D Used to see one once in awhile dead on the lawn. Cats would kill them and not eat'm.

Grandfather knew a couple of Indian brothers who lived in a wigwam out along the brook a bit of a walk from his place. He'd snow shoe out by there sometimes, there was an old logging trail out there. And his uncle had farmed land there, then growing up in trees. He said he might shoe out there 3 days after a snow storm, not a track around the wigwam. No toilets in wigwams. :D :D

[barbender]

Haha they probably had a bucket. That was another one Grandpa told me- they would be walking along with Mrs. Necklace and she would just squat and pee on the ground, just like a deer or goat might, and then keep on walking. Grandpa said he looked at his Dad wide eyed, and his Dad shot him a look like, "not a word boy! Not a word!"😂 He said she just wore a long dress and must not have been encumbered with undies.

[KEC]

I don't know of any muskrats getting into a basement via a drain pipe. I have heard of them crawling up into a field drain tile and dying in there and plugging the drain. As to muskrats out along a snowmobile trail, if it was late winter they may have been males looking for receptive females. Or maybe food supplies were running low or frozen in and they were looking for food. 

[SwampDonkey]

Haha they probably had a bucket.

Yeah, most likely. I've been to white man shacks to where one was in use, literally. Happen to stop there to visit, grandfather again, knew the inhabitant. Guy was eat'n dinner at a small table and also sit'n on the bucket. Door was wide open on the shack. There's a site for ya. :D :D

[Old Greenhorn]

That's what I call efficient processing right there.