Wet Basement Seam Issue

Today, HZG got a little dirty. OK, a lot dirty.

I was called to the home site by a prominent builder to help diagnose a basement issue that had been worked on in the past by a different company. The first issue was easy to diagnose; it was hydrostatic pressure coming from earth over waterproofing. There was approximately 6" of earth over the board with no waterproofing - easy to fix.

The second leak (see picture) was one of those "bad feeling" leaks. Digging down at the corner, I noticed that the protection board butted at the inside corner - not overlapping. Water was able to hit the corner of the block with no issue, traveling down to the footer and into the basement. Without putting an inside system in, the only recourse is to excavate down to the footer and re-apply properly. Major mess; major expense.

The moral of this story is that the job needs to be done right the first time.