My cousin and I are working on restoring my old family home. It is a small, maybe 800 square feet, farmhouse. Half has a basement and half has a crawlspace. There is a hole punched in the basement wall to the crawl space. There is another opening in the basement wall which leads to a tunnel to a root cellar which has dirt walls and floor. The root cellar tunnel is on the south side. The crawl space on the west side.
The north side of the basement has leaked terribly for years. There were even occasions when the basement would fill up almost entirely with water. A sump pump manages to stop that from happening. The crawl space area is very damp as well and water will slowly leak from the crawl space into the basement. The crawl space had so many years of dampness that the floors rotted under that area of the house. We replaced part of those floors this summer.
My cousin's husband has a backhoe and he trenched around the north side of the house, put in drain tile and sloped the piping away from the house for quite a distance to a ditch. Unfortunately, I think that he did not dig deep enough and he did not go to the bottom of the foundation. So, the water problem remains as bad. The soil has a hard clay layer at about 4 feet down.
Any suggestions for the re-do? Part of the problem is that the house sits in a low spot on the property and it would be a major endeavor to regrade the land to slope away from the house and the slope will have to end in some kind of ditch. But we have a backhoe available and a front end loader.
Also, when the foundation is exposed should it be covered with any kind of barrier?
How about the crawl space? Should that be trenched around the house? How deep? As deep as the basement?
The picture is of the north side. Crawl space is under the single window where my cousin has her head poked in. The basement is under the double window. The basement is maybe nine or ten feet wide.
The north side of the basement has leaked terribly for years. There were even occasions when the basement would fill up almost entirely with water. A sump pump manages to stop that from happening. The crawl space area is very damp as well and water will slowly leak from the crawl space into the basement. The crawl space had so many years of dampness that the floors rotted under that area of the house. We replaced part of those floors this summer.
My cousin's husband has a backhoe and he trenched around the north side of the house, put in drain tile and sloped the piping away from the house for quite a distance to a ditch. Unfortunately, I think that he did not dig deep enough and he did not go to the bottom of the foundation. So, the water problem remains as bad. The soil has a hard clay layer at about 4 feet down.
Any suggestions for the re-do? Part of the problem is that the house sits in a low spot on the property and it would be a major endeavor to regrade the land to slope away from the house and the slope will have to end in some kind of ditch. But we have a backhoe available and a front end loader.
Also, when the foundation is exposed should it be covered with any kind of barrier?
How about the crawl space? Should that be trenched around the house? How deep? As deep as the basement?
The picture is of the north side. Crawl space is under the single window where my cousin has her head poked in. The basement is under the double window. The basement is maybe nine or ten feet wide.
Last edited: