Here’s to a Dry Basement

Ever since my wife, Cindy and I bought our house about thirty years ago, we have had a damp basement and in the rainy seasons, there has been a small trickle of water across the floor. Of course, when we bought the house, it was at the end of a dry summer, and the stream had dried up.

Even with a dehumidifier, the basement has been damp, allowing iron and steel to rust and some items to have mold grow on them. It has been a battle to store things in the cellar and keep them functional.

When the rain is heavy, the water sometimes flows down the drive and because it overwhelms the drainage pipe, it can flow into the basement. There have been times that the water becomes ankle deep. So much water cannot be removed by the two sump pumps and I have to enlist the aid of a third to overcome the influx of water.

Hopefully, today is the beginning of the end of a wet basement. I hired a company to come in and redo the French ditching around the outside of the house, to brace a bulging wall in my cold cellar, and to retrench the inside of the foundation, installing larger sump pumps and a ventilation system. The claim is the retrenching will channel the ground water into the pumps. The new ventilation system will remove more moisture than two regular dehumidifiers.

It wasn’t an easy choice. Their fees were tremendous, but I don’t plan to live here forever and I won’t think about selling it with the wet cellar that I bought.