Water Water Everywhere And.....

You do not want to drink it.
My Mom lives in Kentucky and bad storms, strong winds, flooding and the occasional tornado are fairly frequent. When my parents bought their property years ago, my Mom wanted a storm shelter, so of course, my Dad dug one. A pretty strong one in fact. The walls are 18 inches of concrete, with rebar and the roof is also 18 inches, with rebar and steel mesh. You can literally park a truck on it.

What he didn't do, is pour the concrete as well as it should have been, so now, it leaks. [ I tried to tell him, but noooo. Don't listen to David. He's only poured a bazillion yards of the stuff ] It's along the bottom of the walls, where the wall and floor meet. I've been looking for a good sealant, as storms have been bad this year and Mom, being on her own, needs the protection. She has been forced to get in the shelter, with water almost up to calf height, a couple of times this year and...well.. it's my Mom. I want her safe. And dry.

Has anyone used a product that will work in this situation? We've tried all the "paint on" stuff out there, but it's just too thin and doesn't seal. This is underground, about 7 ft, with the water pushing up, as it settles along the outside walls. I've been looking at Flexseal or the Rustoleum brand, both being basically the same thing and there are other products, but I really don't have the money to keep experimenting. Some of this stuff is up to $70 bucks a gallon, so I need something that's going to work.
Any ideas?

Two solutions . Dig you a French drain around this place down to about 4 ft. This will handle a lot of the water as it will funnel it to where you want it to go. Second....sump pump. Small sump pump with a float switch. A lot of the homes in and around my area have storm cellars most have the sump pump solution. Hope this helps them moms are damn special. From my own past experience the sump pump is the way to go. It's damn near impossible to stop what your talking about. Even harder in rainy climates. You can also rig it to run off batteries if the power goes out.

a reply to: DAVID64

Marbelite, it's used to line pools. You could curve the edges, corners where wall meets floor, or camfer them and then spray in 1/2" of Marbelite on the walls, floor and roof. That would make a water tight seal on all surfaces. Not sure about the cost and you may have to acid etch the concrete first with muriatic acid. Any rubberized compound will rapidly lose its bond with the concrete once water starts trying to come in, due to the pressure. Hope this idea helps.

The last idea is a good one too, re sump pump, but you will need a backup generator as in many cases during tornado season and large storms, the power gets knocked out.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: DAVID64

I know you're being serious, and I'm sorry this has happened.
Apon my quick search, this Gaf of a product popped up.

www.flexsealsale.com...

a reply to: DAVID64

I do not know if this stuff is available in the US, and I do not know if it is available in a large enough quantity, but The Works, No Limit Secure and Seal is a fantastic product. It can seal leaks in pipes, tanks, and anywhere water is present, even when the tank or vessel is full, and water is coming out. It can be used in the wet or dry, with virtually no surface preparation.



If you know where the water is actually penetrating, or can get this stuff in a format which would be spreadable rather than pumped out from a mastic tube, I highly recommend it, because nothing else on the market today does a better job.

a reply to: openyourmind1262

I've got a sump pump in it, but water has to get to a certain level for it to kick on. I'm looking to stop the leaks all together. After all the stuff we've tried, I'm about ready to just dig a new shelter and pour the concrete myself.

I have had good luck with this on concrete and block. It actually binds to the concrete and does the job.

www.thoroproducts.com...

But it doesn't stick to areas already patched by tar or rubber based products, so I am thinking it won't work in your case.

If at the bottom there is clay, water from on top could be filtering down around it and it can't get out. It will find it's way in along that bottom seam slowly but surely. That can be solved by putting a sidewalk around it to keep the water from going down or putting clay based layer under the topsoil around it so it does not sink in there.

Getting a backhoe to dig around it with some pea gravel and a drainfield and pipe out to a lower area works best, that way it drains the water away. That takes care of high ground water levels but is also expensive.

They should have built that thing so it was a couple feet out of the ground and the top could have been used as a patio for the house.

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I had forget all about the stuff. I sprayed it years ago over styrofoam, to make some decorative shapes on the front of a house. You can work it just like mortar or concrete, if you don't spray it too thick. We even mixed particles in it to give it a "gravelly" texture. I liked it it because you could mix it to match any color you wanted and we even did the whole outside of a car dealership, who wanted to update the look of their building, without going through a whole remodel.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I'm pretty sure I've seen that in commercials here in the States. I found it on Amazon UK and if it works that well, I'm happy to have it shipped over.

www.amazon.co.uk...

a reply to: rickymouse

They should have built that thing so it was a couple feet out of the ground and the top could have been used as a patio for the house.

The shelter sticks up about 2 ft above the ground, with a slanted door and steps leading down. My Dad and I built it and I kept trying to tell him to line the forms with a double layer of heavy plastic sheeting between the concrete and ground, wrapped up past the tops of the walls. The whole top is covered in dirt, with grass growing, so it doesn't look like a big concrete square sticking up in the middle of the back yard. I tried to get him to pour the walls and floor at the same time too, but..well..you see how that went. I'll talk to Mom about all of these and see how far she wants to go as far as money. I've told her that, in the long run, it'd be cheaper to just dig a new one, rather than keep spending money on all these "fixes", but neither of us can afford to spend 10 grand on something like that.
I have an idea I've been thinking of.....core drill an 8 inch round hole in the floor, dig down another 6 ft, line it with a drainage pipe wrapped in mesh so the dirt doesn't flow in with the water, 2 ft of gravel in the bottom and a sump pump sitting on top of that. Hopefully, that'd give the water somewhere to go, instead of up between the walls and floor.

a reply to: DAVID64

Like I say, I do not know if it can solve your problem, because I do not know if it's visible cracks that you are looking to fill and seal, or if it's more like the wall is sweating, or the floor is sweating. I also, as I say, do not know if it comes in a format which is easier to apply in a coating, over a large area. All I know is, when I want to keep water out of stuff, or in stuff, that is the gear I go for every time.

I really hope you find a solution to your issue though, because calf deep water is no joke, especially if you are already in a bad situation in the first place!

Thinking of your poor mom in that shelter all alone is bad enough but when you mentioned sump pumps red flags went up.

I grew up near lake Michigan. Water in basements was a huge problem, most homes had sump pumps. Ours emptied into the field next to our house via a long pipe.

There was no screen/grate over the open end of the drain pipe and sometimes critters crawled through. The sump pump in the basement was open, no housing or grating.

During bad storms it was like the "Shawshank Redemption" for critters only they were coming in, not out. It was an old house/setup, without the pump the basement would've stayed wet all the time. We kept an eye out for soggy visitors/set traps. No snakes ever came in but a half drowned bat crawled through once, scared me to death.

It might be a no-brainer for you but but whoever set up our system sure didn't think about it. Animals will duck into pipes for shelter, so make sure whatever drainage pipes you install are firmly grated to keep them out. I'd hate for your mom to be stuck battling creepy critters in such close quarters.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I enjoyed that video and I don't even need the stuff. Bed time I think.

I would install a interior drain tile system and tie it into the sump, if you can't daylight the drain out the side of a hill, lower than the drain tile.

The proper repair would be to dig around the foundation, down to the footing, backfill with gravel and a corrugated 6" drain tube, after the wall is coated with tar, then insulation.

If the excavator is there, I would daylight the pipe, with a critter guard on the end, just make the exit lower than the footings.

If you can't daylight it, tie it into the sump.

The majority of that water should go away if you keep proper grading around it, assuming it is not a high water table issue.

Stopping osmotic pressure or groundwater permeating groundwater is almost impossible, it is like pushing a bowl into water, but the bowl is porous.
Any coating will fail on the interior, it needs to be waterproofed on the outside.

Interior waterproofing is for swimming pools, not basements, unless you want one.

originally posted by: Morningglory
Thinking of your poor mom in that shelter all alone is bad enough but when you mentioned sump pumps red flags went up.

I grew up near lake Michigan. Water in basements was a huge problem, most homes had sump pumps. Ours emptied into the field next to our house via a long pipe.

There was no screen/grate over the open end of the drain pipe and sometimes critters crawled through. The sump pump in the basement was open, no housing or grating.

During bad storms it was like the "Shawshank Redemption" for critters only they were coming in, not out. It was an old house/setup, without the pump the basement would've stayed wet all the time. We kept an eye out for soggy visitors/set traps. No snakes ever came in but a half drowned bat crawled through once, scared me to death.

It might be a no-brainer for you but but whoever set up our system sure didn't think about it. Animals will duck into pipes for shelter, so make sure whatever drainage pipes you install are firmly grated to keep them out. I'd hate for your mom to be stuck battling creepy critters in such close quarters.

We had a problem like with mink and weasels coming into the drainage system for one side the house with the hot tub, sauna and jacuzzi. If ever there was a heavy downpour or a tub was being emptied, you'd think the whole neighbourhood lived in there lol. As i said before though, a sump pump needs electricity and if you have a really heavy storm, the electricity is probably going down and the water will be going up.

Cheers - Dave

Go to a forum where people know what they're talking about. That's not here.

Surely a home construction message board is a far better choice if you were serious about solving a problem like this.

WAs the floor a slab a monoslab with thickened footings or a seperate floor put in after the wall footings were in place and walls poured?

One has a straight crack, Monoslab,while the other has a harder way for water to enter.

How thick is the floor? I rented a core drill and bit one time, it costed about a hundred fifty bucks. I own a milwaukee hawk rotary hammer drill and I can drill a bunch of holes and knock out the core in less time than it takes to rent the drill and drill the whole and bring the drill back. I also have air chissels to use.

Digging that hole three feet deep isn't that hard if the hole is big enough for a power auger. They only go down about three feet though. I used to have one, all I have now is one for my tractor.