Basement flooding lightly

We have not lived in our new house a month yet and now during big storms, the basement is leaking!!!

We woke up again to the laundry room and storage room covered in a thin layer of water. My mat in front of the dryer was soaked.

It seems to be rising up from under ground around the wall in the laundry room and coming up from where the oil tank is.

We are in a split level so my "basement" is actually my lowest level but it hasnt affected the kitchen or dining room yet.

DH says we will prob. need to install a sub-pump- I'm just PO'd noone ever said anything before we closed.

Ahh- the joys of homeownership

Re: Basement flooding lightly

I'm sure you've heard this - welcome to home ownership!

I feel your pain - last year at this time, we had the valentine's day storm and then the st patrick's day storm, both flooded our basement and broke one of our gutters in half. And we had only lived in the house for a few weeks.

Re: Basement flooding lightly

You could try diverting your gutter downspouts away from the house, putting in a sump pump and in extreme situations, putting in a french drain which is a trench system around the perimeter of the outside.

I'm sorry you're going through this.

If you do a search on "sump pump" or "french drain" in the Home forum, you'll find a lot of threads about it.

Good luck with the fix!

Re: Basement flooding lightly

I had some minor flooding in my basement. Redirecting the drains (and having an extension so they drained 10' from the house) helped a lot. In one section, I used UGL waterproofing paint, and that does really does a good job of stopping minor seeping and leaking through the walls.

Re: Basement flooding lightly

We have a sump pump and it works great. We have only gotten water in our basement once from rain (a few times from a leaky pipe).

It's been working overtime the past couple of days.

Re: Basement flooding lightly

We had some problems with water in our basement after we moved in so I feel fo you...we later heard from our neighbors that the old owner had mentioned it to them. It happens - unfortunately.

We actually put concrete around the whole house and that helped a bit but I wouldn't suggest it. It's $$$ and our intention had been to do this from the start...the leaks just moved it on the priority list.

Definitely check out the options the posters above mentioned.

Re: Basement flooding lightly

Thanks for the advice...I apprecite it since I'm clueless about home improvement and those issues.

We need to get a contractor out here anyway because our insurance co. wants proof of a quote to fix our front pation that has major cracks in it (even in the dead of winter, they need to know we are going to fix it or they'll drop us)
So when he comes over for that- we'll ask him about this situation. I have a feeling the pump is going to be what we need since the backyard has a slight slope down to the house and this could be a bigger problem in coming years.