It is hard to take a picture of what is not there.
Since June 10th, we have received 5.38 inches of rain. That is quite a bit for a 9 day period. Our old basement would have looked like this:
flooded basement floor
That is a picture from two years ago before we had the basement french drains installed.
Today the basement looks like this:
basement after installation of interior french drain system
Which is to say, much better indeed. I also noticed that there are no wet spots on the walls, no active mold colonies, or any other features of wet basements.
I have also noted that the dehumidifier is used a lot less than it used to be. Last year, I only used it during July and August to keep the cold water pipes from sweating. This is saving use some significant money (my estimate is $580.00 per year, based on the Kill A Watt meter results) on our electric bill. That is all good.
In all fairness to American Dry Basement Systems (ADBS), the system that they installed works as advertised and it was worth the expense.
This is a pretty good ad for the company, they should use your pictures. You don’t even have a spot of water or even a little puddle anywhere. I can’t imagine having a basement that floods all the time, all that space you can’t put anything that won’t withstand water damage. I’m sure you’re glad you have a basement floor to use now.
Paul,That has to feel good. Lots of people spend thousands of dollars trying to keep basements dry and they come up short. The interior drains with sump pumps is certainly the best way I know if you’ve got a basement that floods.
[...] http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/putting-the-american-dry-basement-system-to-the-test http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/basement-not-flooding addthis_url = [...]
We had drains installed in our basement and though it was better than nothing we still had a lot of water entering the basement which was a problem. A good way to keep water out is to use a product called hydrabarrier (www.hydrabarrier.com) which is a light weight, re-usable sandbag alternative. These are tubes that are filled with water and placed outside of your doors and keep unwanted water from entering. A great idea and they work great
[...] be about 3 / 8 to ½ inches around. Put in enough gravel to at least 3 inches from the top of the basement. You want the finished product to be high enough so that when the new bed of concrete, cast 1I [...]
Paul, I see this post was posted in june 2009 how has this system been working for you the past 2 years? Please post an update thanks.