Wet, Leaky or Flooded Basements After Dry Drought Conditions

When severe drought conditions spread across New England, any time we have rain it is a much welcomed weather event! The landscape has been so dried out that when it rains you’re probably thinking that the all that rain will be absorbed and lawns will be green again.  What you may not have expected is that when the rain finally arrives you may find your basement in a wet, damp and possibly flooded mess.

As we all know, the rain doesn’t always go where you want it to go and you definitely don’t want or expect it going into your basement or crawlspace.

Your home and basement during a drought can be compared to an old, dried out potted plant, like the one in the image above.  Now that the rains have come, any water or extreme dampness in your basement now can be blamed on the neglected potted plant syndrome.

Basement Waterproofing Project Manager Beth offers up her own analogy to customers, “After a dry period, the rain will run straight into the spaces created by drought and dry and shrinking soils, much like the space created in the pot where a potted plant had dried out.”  With the deluge of rain we have had, all that water is running straight for the crevices and cracks in dry, compact soils.  The dried out ground is not capable of handling the sudden influx of water and offers little absorption until it really becomes wet and almost saturated.

Right now, your home is the pot and the ground around it has shrunk back from the foundation.  All of that water will build and pool against the bottom of the foundation.  Once the water makes it way through the dry soil and hits the compact soil, there’s no place left to go but in! Before you know it, your basement is wet.

If you are seeing water in the basement or coming from a bulkhead, you may not want to wait until the ground is saturated and absorbing water as other issues may be to blame.

Call us to set up an evaluation with Beth to ensure that your basement is safe from water and dampness issues or click to request a basement evaluation!