Well first we'll all send our appreciation and pray for the best for your son.
As for your water problem, you can probably look through the archives and find a bunch on this topic. We've run it around many times. The immediate suggestion would be to pick up a wet dry shop vac while they'll be on sale this season. I've used them many times in a flooding situation and the stronger ones will pull the water from carpet and help in drying it from pulling a vacuum on the carpet itself. As for outside, there are lots of places you can start. Do you have gutters? Are they clean? Is there a downspout on that corner? If there is a downspout, make sure it is able to empty without restriction to the flow. If draining is free flowing, you may want to extend the end several feet from the house. It sounds like the house is built on a concrete pad so you don't have the problem of cement blocks filling and leaking into the house below ground level. There are various things that can be applied to cement block to water proof it, but that is only a bandade over the problem. The problem is the need to drain water away from the house before it can build up and soak through. What you will need to do first is look at the ground itself on the corners where the water comes into the house. The lay of the land needs to be higher at the house and then slope away. If the ground is less than level it will collect water there. My first thoughts would be to dig a shallow trench around the outside and lay drain tile. Drain tile is just 4 inch or larger plastic pipe with holes about half way around the pipe. The holes need to face up so water can get in the pipe and be carried away. Shallow trench as in 8 to 12 inches. You would make a trench that has a gentle slope like a quarter inch per foot, fill the bottom with a couple inches of gravel, lay drain tile on the gravel and then fill the rest of the trench with gravel so the drain tile is covered. Then you can use the remaining dirt to cover the gravel and form a slope away from the house for the water to run off. Lots of us have done projects like this and my way is to wrap the drain tile with a fabric before putting in the ground. The fabric works as a type of filter keeping dirt and sand from washing into the tile and clogging it. Of course the tile has to continue away from the house for a ways before emptying out or you'll just move the problem somewhere else along the side of the house. So you'll also have to decide where the lowest point is, and put in a T or elbow to run more pipe away from the house. Here is an idea to get you started and I'm sure more will follow. Good luck ----- Original Message ----- From: Mycell Armington To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 11:03 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Help--my floor is leaking upwards! Hello All, I joined this list several months ago and have just been lurking and reading and learning. A lot of the things I don't know about personally and I probably will never use, but I thought it would be good just to have a source to go to when needing home repair questions answered. Well, I have a problem and I need your counsel, please read this out and lend me your multitude of counsel. First of all I'll try and explain my subject line. I live in a home that was built in 1962. It was added on to at one end by closing in the car port-/garage. Well that's another problem for another day. My immediate problem is when it rains in massive quantities like for 2 or 3 days and I mean heavy rain 10 inches or more in a 12 to 24 hour time frame the concrete foundation gets wet and this is only in certain areas of the house that water soaks up through ceramic tile. It's happened in the same places 3 times this year and totally saturated my carpets that are on top of the tiling. The room that this phenomenon is occurring in is my bedroom and it's only happening in two corners those corners are on the outside of the house and they are on the same side. The house is made of concrete block and brick and some wood siding. Sorry to belabor the description but the better I describe the better you may be able to help me. I am a single mother of adult children who are scattered over different parts of the world. My son is a United States Marine and is currently preparing to go to Iraq so he can't really do anything. I've asked a few people and they're saying there may be a sealant that can be painted on or poured on. Please help because I'm truly tired of calling for help to move heavy furniture around and pulling up nasty stinky carpet and padding and then running box fans directly through the carpet to get it to dry to prevent it from mildew and mold. I had someone the last time to cut the padding in sections and I ran the padding through the dryer. I didn't think of that one someone else did. Please, please , lend me your wisdom, counsel and advice. It took about 30 hours the last time to finally get things back together. Warm regards and much thanks in advance for any workable solutions. Mycell Armington in Tallahassee Florida. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
