We first called TerraFirma but the salesman said we could dig out the entire exterior, add a membrane, drains etc for about $24,000. When I pressed for other ideas he seemed unenthusiastic. I said I would think about it and he never contacted me again. We then tried another company who was at least amenable to other approaches and gave me a quote of $12,000 for a sump pump and interior perimeter drains. Then we called John's Waterproofing and Peter came out. Peter was awesome. He had a whole suite of things that could help out in the basement and really listened and discussed our options. We weren't going for a dead dry basement that we could finish, we just wanted to get it dry and lower the humidity. So Peter and I went through all the things and came up with a plan together. In the end, we had a sump pump, perimeter drains in the basement and crawlspace, clean space barrier throughout the crawl and bright space paneling on the walls of the basement to stop humidity coming in from the walls. We also had piping installed below ground outside in which to run the gutters out to the street. All of that for only $8000. Once agreed the crews came right on schedule and finished the work ahead of time. I've waited to give a review to see the system in action. For the past week, it has been raining steadily. However in our basement is nothing but dry dust.
Description of work:
Our house is at the low point along several blocks and so our half basement/half crawl have always had problems with water intrusion. When it's not raining the basement has been humid and damp feeling, when it's raining the basement has had puddles of standing water. That has also caused the house to feel damp. We needed to dry out the basement and run water from the roof away from the house.
Dan P. of Salem, OR
Monday, February 13th
