Hello Mycell, Robert has described one potentially pretty good solution. I would add that you might extend the drain down hill as far away as you can from the building if that is an option and dig and install a dry well. These can be variably sophisticated but mostly you dig a hole and fill it with crushed rock with a sort of barrel with holes in it like a colander into which the drain is inserted. You could add a weeping bed I suppose but this should not be necessary. the holey barrel has a relief float arrangement at the top to allow water to escape should the well fill beyond capacity, being down hill from the problem the excess should continue to drain away.
I wonder though if the problem is of rain driving against the building and migrating through. Ceramic tile is normally impermeable to water so except for the grout it seems unlikely to me that the water is rising up through the tile. After all, one often tiles showers and bathroom floors to keep the water from draining through to surfaces below and behind the tiles. You say the building is made of concrete block. I once rented office space in a strip mall with a concrete block wall. When wind drove rain against that wall a certain amount would migrate through into the cavities of the block and run down inside collecting at the bottom slowly filling up the blocks. This hydraulic pressure and osmotic pressure being as the inside of the building was dry and warm ultimately brought the water through the block wall mostly ad the bottom of the wall.I have seen this too in basements where the bottom of the wall leaked water across the floor and drilling small holes in the bottom of the block drained them releasing a surprising amount of water. Each compartment, usually three in a concrete block will collect water. Now if the brickwork is a veneer and the water is getting behind it the problem may be more difficult to solve but if the brick is properly installed there should be venting at the bottom of the brick wall where it rests at the base. Every so many bricks should have venting. Look to see that these are free from blockage, they are there exactly to drain any moisture which gets behind the bricks and if clear should keep water from collecting against the cement block and migrating through. If the cement block is directly exposed to the outside then scrubbing it a little to clean it then applying a good quality waterproof paint of suitable colour on the outside to keep wind from driving rain through the surface of the blocks and into the cavities should stop it from collecting in there and making it's way out either through the inside of the block or at the junction where the block rests on the foundation where it can wander across the edges of your floor. Because we can't really see the walls involved it is hard to know, it might even be that the upper part is wood cladding and this is not well enough flashed to carry rain running down the wood from getting in behind the brick and repairing the flashing might be the solution. Hope these ideas are helpful in determining the source and solution to your water infiltration problems. Now that the snow has arrived here in Ernest, Janet and I might be convinced to come for a visit and personal inspection and maybe even a little restoration work. <GRIN> ----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Kennedy To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 6:24 AM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] Help--my floor is leaking upwards! 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: [email protected] 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] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
