Question: I read your column regularly in the Daily Herald and have found it to be very helpful.

Our house is lower than the next two on our street. The landscaping in between channels their water in the direction of my house.

Over the years, and rain upon rain, we have experienced seepage primarily on the floor of our north basement wall and commonly on the floor of our west basement wall. I have done many things to address this problem:

1. Replaced window well covers.

2. Installed downspout extenders, putting the water 15 feet away from the house.

3. Laid down a total of 18 cubic yards of dirt on the west and north sides of the house to remedy the negative grade toward the house.

4. Cleared out the window well drain top “filter.”

My wife and I are tired of the seepage. A month ago, I replaced the two window wells on the north and west walls and sealed them against the house. I covered them with clear window well covers.

When the north window well was replaced, the installers told me that the drainpipe was cracked 18 inches down. They also said that because the window well drain hole was deeper than the window well, dirt and pea gravel had washed into the window well drain. Instead of having them fix the broken pipe, I thought it would be best to have a plumber out to let me know the extent of the problem.

The plumber scoped the drains with a camera and found that the drain was plugged. Also, the window well on the south side was plugged under the basement floor in the laundry room. He used a GPS locator to detect where his camera was in the pipe.

I am told of something called a water jet that can clear pipes. If the water jet works, it would seem most likely to work from the sump pump pit back up into the drainpipes where the content would naturally drain back into the pit. Would a water jet damage the pipes?

The window well installers said they could dig down to the foundation and either cut the pipe and clear out the remainder, or clear out the pipe altogether. Ideally, I'd like to have the south drain cleared as well, but that could possibly involve busting up the basement laundry room floor to replace the clogged portion of the pipe.

Do you have any thoughts, questions, ideas? Thank you for any help.

— Carol Stream, Ill.

Answer: You have raised the negative grade, extended the downspouts, replaced the window wells and covered them, and you still have leakage?

Something does not add up to a surface water problem around your house. If previous leakage occurred through the window wells, it is most likely because of negative grading next to them, since you had covers over them. Your grade corrections should have taken care of this problem.

Since the leakage occurs during long periods of rain, it may be that the drainage from your neighbors, which may include their roof water, is not only percolating into the soil, but also reaching and running down your foundation. The latter should have been cured with your grade corrections.

It is possible that there is a spring close to your foundation that swells in these lengthy periods of rain.

In either of these scenarios, repairing the window wells' drainpipes would not solve the problem. No water should enter the drywells with proper grading and effective covers. So you need to ask yourself if it is worth the expense of getting the drainpipes cleared up or replaced before making sure that they are responsible for the leakage.

I suggest that you be patient, try to determine if either of the possibilities I mentioned above is the culprit, and if it is, how best to deal with it. The difficulty will be to ascertain which of the two it is, and that's a hard one to figure out.

If you can determine for sure that the problem is coming from the neighbors, building a curtain drain between your uphill neighbors and your house to catch the water is one way to deal with it. But it would not help if the leakage is caused by a swelling spring.

The better way to deal with the leakage is to install a drainage system inside the basement, leading to a sump pump. This would cover both possibilities — a spring and runoff from the neighbors.

This can be done by installing a drainage system around the perimeter of the basement below the slab or a surface system at the joint of the slab and the foundation walls.

Please write again if you need more information.

Send questions to Henri de Marne at First Aid for the Ailing House, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106; or email henridemarne@gmavt.net.

---

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---