Basement leakage is more common than most people realize. However, water in basements can be a huge deal, especially if you are trying to sell your home. There are three things homeowners should do to prevent basement leakage; clean their eavestroughs, have their downspouts directed away from the home and ensure that the grading around their home slopes away from the foundation walls. Since most basement leakage is caused by rainwater, doing these prevents water from reaching the home’s foundation so water isn’t accumulating and making its way inside.
The purpose of eavestroughs is to collect all the water that falls on the home, collect it, and bring the water to the downspouts. If eavestroughs are clogged, have holes, or are broken; a large amount of water can fall and collect on the ground near the home. Over time, this will create low spots near the home that fill up with water keeping the water close to the foundation and giving the water time to push its way inside.
The downspouts take the water from the roof and bring it down to the ground. Most of the time, downspouts discharge all the roof water onto a splash pad next to the home. Ideally, they should extend and take the water about 6 feet away from the home. There’s no point in collecting all the water and putting it right next to the home. By adding an extension, which you can find at a local hardware store, you can keep the collected water further away from your foundation walls.
If we took the water 6 feet away and then it all flowed right back to the home, that wouldn’t help. So the last thing we need to do is ensure that the ground around the house is sloped away from the home. The home should sit on a ‘little hill’ so water flows away from it. Meaning that you would need to build up the area around the foundation wall with soil (adding grass if desired) to create a slope away from the home. The slope does not have to be large, just enough so that water flows (about 2%). Even if the overall property slope is towards the house, the 6 feet closest to the home should slope away.
I have seen homes with foundations of stone and mud that have dry basements by simply following the above steps. Please note that if you are getting water into your basement now and you did everything above, it won’t stop leaking from one day to the next. Depending on the soil around your home, it can take a long time for the ground that is saturated with water to dry out. There are faster and more costly alternatives but prevention should greatly reduce, if not eliminate, basement leakage.