Alberta: Leaking Daylight Basement, Interior Drain & Sump

The situation

The owners had lost the basement to winter flooding for eleven years running. Each winter the cove joint would weep along two walls, and within a week there was standing water deep enough to float storage bins. A previous contractor had glued a surface channel to the slab, which caught perhaps a third of the water and none of the hydrostatic pressure (opens in a new tab) .

What we did

We removed the failed surface channel and installed a below-slab interior drain tile system along the two affected walls, bedded in washed stone at footing level and wrapped in filter fabric. A dimpled wall flange was set behind the stone to capture seepage through the rubble joints, with clean-outs at every corner, discharging to a new sump basin with a battery backup pump.

The outcome

Through the following wet season, the wettest winter in eight years, the basement recorded zero standing water and relative humidity held between 44 and 51%. The owners have since finished the space as a music room.

Surface channels are the first of the four shortcuts in where the cheap quote is hiding something . Where the wall itself is sound and only one or two openings leak, crack repair is the cheaper and correct answer instead. The free inspection is how we tell which house is which.

By the numbers