342 N Queen St, Ste 2, Lancaster, PA, 17603
Waterproofing and Moisture Control in Lancaster
We find where the water is arriving before anything is dug, run it to a sealed pit, and put the discharge ten feet out from the wall.
You get a floor that stays dry through a wet March and air down there that no longer smells of it.
This is the water. Where it gets in, where it is sent, and how the air is kept dry once it has gone.
Cracked, bowing or leaning block is a structural problem rather than a water one and goes to an engineer. Radon is its own trade and its own contractor. Once the basement is dry, the framing and the finishing can start on top of it.
Around three hundred and ten drainage and sump jobs since 2009, a good half of them in houses that somebody had already finished once.
Interior drainage around a wet floor, sump pits and pumps with a battery behind them, and vapor barriers and dehumidifiers where the walls are dry but the air is not.
Pipe is four-inch perforated PVC bedded in washed stone at footer level, below the slab rather than sitting on it, running to a sealed twenty-four inch pit with a cast iron pump. Below the slab is the whole point, because a drain laid on top of the concrete never catches what comes up through it.
An owner who has mopped the same corner every March for years, and somebody buying a house here whose inspection report has water infiltration written on it.
Ask for a free damp check at (717) 555-0162. You will stop lifting boxes off the floor every time it rains and start using the room for what you wanted it for!
The same crew cuts the trench, sets the pit and runs the barrier, so nobody is blaming another trade a year later.
Services
For the house where water shows along the joint between the floor and the wall after a heavy week, and for anybody told to deal with the wet before a stud goes up. The trench is cut at footer level, because a channel sitting on top of concrete never catches what arrives from underneath it. Call and somebody works out where the water starts.
For the owner whose pump gave out in the storm that also took the power, and for the house with a pit in the floor nobody has lifted the lid on since it was bought. Cast iron rather than plastic, in a sealed basin, on a check valve and a union so a swap takes twenty minutes. Ring if you want a battery behind it before next March.
For the basement with no leak in it anywhere that still sweats all July and can be smelled from the top of the stairs. Condensation rather than seepage, and no trench will touch it. Heavy poly up the block, lapped and taped, and a dehumidifier plumbed into a drain rather than a bucket somebody has to remember.
The dig is the one people expect and the one most basements do not need.
Interior is right when the water shows at the joint between the floor and the wall after rain, when the block is sound, and when what sits outside is a drive, a patio or a neighbor's wall. It is done from inside in about a week and nothing in the garden gets touched.
Outside is right when the wall itself is wet halfway up, when the coating on it has failed, or when a window well fills and holds water. Draining the inside of a wall that is soaking through does move the water, but it leaves the block wet, and wet block is what pushes a finish off later.
We say which it is on the visit and we put it in writing, including the times it is the cheaper one. A dig is three or four times the work of a trench inside, so an outfit that recommends one every time is not diagnosing anything.
Four-inch perforated pipe in washed stone, a sealed pit with a cast iron pump, and fifteen-mil poly up the block.
The trench is cut through the slab down at the footer rather than against the top of it, because water arriving underneath a floor cannot be caught by anything sitting on that floor.
Four-inch perforated PVC goes in on washed stone, sleeved where the soil is fine, and falls to a twenty-four inch basin with a gasketed lid on it.
The pump is cast iron rather than plastic, on a check valve and an inch and a half discharge, and the line leaves the house and runs ten feet out before it lets go. Walls take fifteen-mil reinforced poly, lapped, taped and mechanically fastened to the top of the block. The dehumidifier goes to a drain, never a bucket.
Call and somebody comes out, reads the walls and the floor with a meter, and tells you where the water is arriving, at no charge.
(717) 555-0162Two wet basements can quote a long way apart. The gap is almost always how much concrete has to come up and how far the water then has to be carried.
The trench length gets measured on the day rather than guessed at from outside, and nothing is booked until you are holding it in writing. Get a free quote
Six to ten weeks end to end on a whole basement, and the loud, dusty part of it is over in the first two.
Ring (717) 555-0162 and somebody calls you back the same day to book a free look at the basement.
Get a free quoteA wet basement is a question on the disclosure form long before it is a smell.
No published report puts a resale figure on basement waterproofing, and we are not going to reach for a loosely related one. Remodeling studies price kitchens, baths and decks, and nothing in any of them covers a drain under a slab.
What does exist here is the paperwork. Pennsylvania's seller disclosure law makes a seller state, in writing, whether the property has had water leakage or dampness in the basement and whether anything was done about it. That answer follows the house.
A dated invoice for an interior drain and a pump turns a yes into a yes with an explanation, and no paperwork at all turns the same yes into a deduction the buyer's agent gets to invent.
Limestone puts water up through the slab rather than in at the wall, the older city lots have nowhere to send a discharge, and the worst week is the March thaw.
Six drainage and moisture jobs, each with the town it is in and where the water turned out to be arriving from.
Full perimeter drain and pit
Ephrata
Water at the floor joint on three walls every spring. Ninety feet of trench, a sealed pit, and the discharge buried out to a pop-up on the slope.
Sump and battery in a rowhouse
Columbia
No yard to send a line into, so the discharge was tied to the storm connection at the front and the pit was given a sealed cell backup.
Condensation, not a leak
Lititz
The wall was wet every July with no seepage anywhere on it. Foam on the block and a dehumidifier plumbed to the pit fixed it without a trench.
Drain under a finished room
Manheim
The room had been finished over a wet floor by somebody else. One wall came off, the trench went in behind it, and the board went back up.
Window well drain and cover
Mount Joy
The well filled and went over the sill in heavy rain. A drain was dug down to the footer pipe and a fitted clear cover put over the top.
Downspouts and regrading first
Millersville
Half the water was coming off the roof and standing at the wall. Extended lines and ten feet of regrading took the seepage away on their own.
Rated 5 out of 5
Smelled damp down there every summer we owned the place. They drained the floor before a stud went up, then framed and finished it. Third July down there and no smell.
Rated 5 out of 5
Stone foundation, 1880s farmhouse, and the township sat on the permit two weeks longer than anyone wanted. Curt called every Friday of that wait anyway. The bar and the family room were done by August.
Rated 5 out of 5
My mother moved in with us in the spring, so the basement had to be an apartment by then. The stair was the part I never thought about. She has her own door at the top now and comes and goes without us.
Ask us for the address of a job like yours when we visit, and go and look at it in the rain.
Get a free quoteFAQs
Questions about wet basements in Lancaster
It stops it reaching the floor, which is the part you actually see. Water arriving through the block still runs down the inside face of it into the channel and away, so the room stays dry. What it does not do is dry the block itself, and where that matters we say so and price the outside.
Only if there is already something feeding it. A pump sitting in a pit with no pipe running to it can take away water that finds its own way there, which is usually the wettest corner and nowhere else. The pit is the end of a drainage system rather than the system itself.
Plan on seven to ten years for a cast iron pump on ordinary duty, and less where it runs every day. The float switch normally goes before the motor does. We fit a union above the check valve so a swap is twenty minutes with a wrench rather than a call-out and half a day.
Not for an interior drain. All of it happens inside, the spoil goes out through the house, and nothing outdoors is touched except downspout extensions. Digging the outside out is a different job and we only put it forward when the wall itself is wet rather than the floor.
With a single pump, nothing happens, and the storm that knocks the power out tends to be the storm that fills the pit. A backup is a second pump on a sealed battery carrying about eight hours of ordinary duty, and it is the cheapest part of the whole system to add at the start.
That is efflorescence, salt left behind as water passes through the block and evaporates off the face. The powder is harmless and the water it proves is not. We brush it off, note where it was, and use the pattern to work out which part of the wall is passing water and how high it gets.
A hairline crack that weeps gets injected with polyurethane from the inside, which fills the full thickness of the wall and stays flexible. A crack wider than a pencil, one with a step in it, or one that has moved since you first noticed it is an engineer's call and we will not inject it.
Out of the house and at least ten feet away from the wall, either onto a slope or into a buried line with a pop-up on the end of it. It never goes into the sanitary sewer, which is not allowed here, and it never stops two feet from the foundation where it simply walks back in.
Usually yes, right through the summer. A drain deals with liquid water and does nothing at all about humid air coming down an open stair in July. Fifty percent relative humidity is the target, and a unit plumbed into the pit holds it there without anybody having to empty anything.
A single wall is two days. A full perimeter in an average house is four to five, with the saw cutting done on the first day and the concrete back in on the last one. It then wants a couple of days to cure before anything gets stood on it or stacked against the wall.
Yes, and it is about a third of the work we do. The bottom two feet of the finish comes off the wall we are trenching, the drain goes in behind it, and it is put back and painted. Where the finish is sitting on wet block we say what will happen to it before touching anything.
March, and the first heavy week after it. We leave a moisture meter reading for the walls at handover so there is a number to measure against later, and the pit has a lid you can lift to see whether the pump is cycling. If it is still wet, ring us and somebody comes back out.
We have worked on Lancaster basements since 2009 and we call back the same day.
Lancaster Basement Pros finishes basements in Lancaster, Lititz, Ephrata and the townships around them. Drainage, a sump and a vapor barrier first, then framing, board, floor, ceiling and lighting. Bathrooms, wet bars, egress windows and in-law suites too. Foundation repair and radon work go to the trades licensed for those.
Why call a basement crew and not a general builder?
Whether the basement is dry and empty or wet and full of boxes, the next move is the same. Call (717) 555-0162 and somebody rings you back the same day to arrange a look at it. You get a scale layout and a written price out of that visit, and no obligation to do anything with either.
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office@lancasterbasementpros.com
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342 N Queen St, Ste 2, Lancaster, PA, 17603
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