How to fix a Wet basement with Draintile

all right we are in the drain tile job from Hell project what I mean is this is no ordinary drain tole project the first thing I want to point out is a we don't like to do interior drain to project to begin with if we can keep the water on the outside from ever mitigating inside that's your best case scenario but sometimes that's not possible on this specific job site all the grades are set so high that there's no way to keep the water from coming into the basement so we've got to capture it before it floods out this entire project there's a few things I want to show you about this job this is your normal drain tile area so we've got a nice footing here we dig it out we put wheat board in and then we put uh 3/4 clear over the top of it a 4 in perum all right we're going to put the sump Basket in here because it's out of the way we normally don't like to put them in high traffic areas there's nothing different about it let's go over here let's show you why this is the project from he we don't only have one elevation we have three different elevation changes on in this basement so three different step ups and downs but guess what this house used to be a chicken cou it was never put on the proper footing so as we're digging along these lines we're coming to different areas in the house that were built at different times this wall has absolutely no footing underneath it whatsoever come on this way we're going to show you something even more fun and exciting if you look on this wall you have the water line line coming out come on over here and check this out what you'll typically find is in these constructions they don't pack the soil that goes over the water line so 10 20 50 years it Hollows it the soil compact we're standing on hollowed ground right now and I don't mean hollowed in a good way I mean this floor I can reach my entire arm underneath Hollow so what we've got to do is we've got to take all the sand that we can dig out of this basement and pack back underneath there and try to pack it in place cuz if we dropped a bowling ball right now on this we drop down 12 in you see that when you come across pipes now let's go do another fun area of the house okay so the house this is the drain toown J from H but it's the we love the customer he's standing right behind me turning on the lights for us watching us film this but this is what I want to point up look look at this difference in elevation we've already come up one stair we're going up two more stairs and this portion of the house was obviously built at a different era if I stand up straight and I'm no big man I would easily hit my head but that doesn't mean we don't have water problems in here just because the floor raises up the water still infiltrates into this area we may not be able to connect up with the main system so what we're going to do is we're going to install a separate system in here and see if we can hook up into the main system to do that we have to Jackhammer through his stairs to go into the main line follow me this way we've got one more area that we've got to connect up because the water is permeating throughout the entire basement we've got to come over into this room and capture all of the water that's coming into this area so what we're going to try to do is bring this drain towel system down and around and hook up into the main one and when I say try to do before we know if we can accomplish it or not we've got to make sure all of our elevations are set so that we have a positive pitch like they say crap rolls down Hill that's the same thing we've got to do in this basement is make sure all the water flows down and into one main collection area where we can pump it out the green TI job from hell is living up to its reputation not only are we finding Foundation walls that have no footing but we're finding footings that have no foundation wall so we're what we're doing is we're jackhammering through those versus using a concrete saw to cut through them the benefit of using an air powered Jackhammer in a tight confined space like this is we're not getting the fumes running throughout the house one other thing that we're doing is we're using a laser to make sure that all of our trenches have a positive pitch on it another thing that we're doing is we're using a new drain tile system that actually uses styrofoam to wrap around the drain tile and the benefit of that is it's light and easy for the guys to get this down and in when otherwise we would be bucketing materials throughout the house and creating a mess we can simply grab this it has a drain tile drainage aggregate with it and we bring it right down in the trench what you're going to find is we have a large enough void around the drain towel that we're going to compensate with the rest of this space by putting in drainage material around it we're using lava rock in this case because it's light and easy to to maneuver and get down in place it comes in bags and we're going to run that down to the sump let's walk into the back room here and let's see what we've got to do we're going to use what we' got here is we've got two footings uh in this place so we've got to take the wall down to get a wheat board in so that we can get capture all the water that's coming down off from the wall and get it into the drain towel system as well so we're going to show you that process after we have this whole thing carved away dug out and um the wheat board put in place which is the next step to this project tile job we'd have maybe one or two cubic yards of concrete on average going in we'd hand mix that in place right down in the basement on this job we have over 10 yards of con that has to go in and it has to be snaked down and through the basement which really doesn't have not only no no easy access points but has no ventilation so what we're opting to do with this job is use a concrete Placer and have a mixing truck already bring in premixed concrete and we're going to actually use a hose to bring it right down into the customer's house why is this important is because we're going to save a lot of time doing it this way we're going to save a lot of mess for the customer because we're able to get in and get the concrete pour very quickly if we brought it in with bags and we mixed it ourselves we'd have to bring in hundreds and hundreds of bags of concrete carry them down into the basement bring a mixer in and then bucket that material down into the basement it would get really messy really fast this is the quick way it gets the job done and it actually saves uh um overall expense on the project for both the customer and for us here you can see the only access point into the basement is through this window without coming through the entire house so this is the hose that's actually pumping the concrete into place to fill up these trenches you can see some of the concrete going in and there's the hose and that's how we're getting the concrete into this job so that we're not uh creating a huge mess for this customer so this entire room was void of footings and actually this is a pillar right here that holds up a good portion of the house and that had nothing underneath it so we were actually uh dug down around that footing and put extra Concrete in removed more material so that's part of where some of the ex so here you can see how we get the concrete in place it's quick easy easy in comparison to bringing in bags of concrete hand mixing it and trying to get it Pour and the the key component to doing it this way is the consistency all of the concrete is wet at the same time and it all dries at the same time that's huge to make sure that you don't get any differential cracks and settlement in the creek as it's being process this is all just getting so what you heard him just say was that that entire area gets fill build in and I was talking about the differential drying between the materials when you have dry concrete and you put wet concrete next to it you get a crack that's not cohesive and eventually that crack will separate even further all the concrete in in the basement and I want to show you exactly how this wheep board works so because we in this case we have water that not only comes through the walls and Down the Walls and actually over the tops of the walls and in and from the ground up what we've done is this wheat board acts as a collection channel so as the water flows down the wall here it goes behind the wheat board and it allows it to go directly into the drain tile system below so it's just an Avenue for the water to escape before it migrates onto the floor the last part of it is putting the pump in we're going to use a battery backup system in this it's just simply putting it into the um some back basket that we have in this room we can't really see it because it's too dark but we' plumbed it hard plumbed it up and outside and all the water in this basement from the entire structure all 233 linear feet that wraps around the perimeter of this basement from the three different levels comes down to one point this pump collects it kicks on automatically pumps it out and in case of an emergency if the electricity and the power goes out it has a battery that connects with it will keep the pump running so the basement doesn't flood out that's one of the worst Parts about having a sump pump system if you don't have a battery backup the electricity goes out from a lightning strike your sunp pump is out of commission this this ensures that you always have an operating pump why would we consider this the interior drain tile job from Hell there was no one big thing that made this job uh you know project from hell it was just a lot of little things that added up you know a good example would just be on the import of the concrete alone normally we'll bring in two cubic yards of concrete on this job we had to bring in 10 cubic yards of concrete and as when you start dealing with all those little things you as a contractor have a choice to make there's one of two ways that you can handle it you can either do it the right way or you can do it the rushed way ultimately the reputation of your company depends on your decision at that point choose to do it the right way not every job's going to be a winner but in the end it's going to be a reflection of the quality that you're willing to put for forth in that company that's going to keep you booked it's going to keep you busy it's going to keep you moving forward down the road