Why Waterproofing Your Basement Is Important

It is necessary for the basement of your home or your commercial building to be waterproof at all times. Damp, leaking, or flooded basement is a usual nightmare of any homeowner or building owner. The reason is quite obvious. It is a hassle if such problems occur especially during rainy or winter season. When it rains, the basement is usually an area in your place where rainfall is accumulated. During or after winter, melted glacier or snow could accumulate and flood your basement. Needless to say, waterproofing is the answer to any flooding basement nightmare.

You should make sure your home or commercial building would not have such a problem in the future. Even if that part of your property is not a pressing problem today, there is a possibility that it would encounter moisture or leaking issues sometime. You should always be on guard to make sure you would not be plagued by that hassle. You could prevent the inevitable. Prevention is still the cheapest and surest measure to spare you from any significant cost in the coming months or years.

As a general rule, basement waterproofing should be ensured especially during the construction of your home or building. Older homes or buildings could be sealed using tar-based solvents to prevent the problem. But you could never always rely on that. This is because such materials almost always last just about 10 years. The tar-based solvents eventually dry and then crack after that period so that water would seep through. If you have purchased a home or a building with tar-based solvents used in the basement for waterproofing, you should take note of the construction date. From that date, you could count up to 10 years so you would know when you could possibly expect the problem.

If you are constructing a new home or commercial building today, you should not resort to using such material for waterproofing your basement. Instead, you should require a membrane layer that is comprised of polymerized asphalt. This is a modern technology that would surely provide you with a longer lasting solution for any potential flooding problem in the basement for a much longer time.

If cracking would occur in your wall, which could be inevitable, polymerized asphalt membrane would stretch across any crack to effectively and reliably maintain integrity of waterproofing. If such membrane is not present, there could still be several other alternatives that could be of great help. One of them is the use of a French drain system.

A French drain system is buried strategically along leaking perimeter walls right below your basement floor. The drain comprises of a perforated plastic pipe connected to a functional sump pump. That pipe should be covered with cement to avoid weep holes, which would collect water that could seep into and through the walls of the basement. This way, waterproofing of your basement would be ensured for a long time. You would be spared from any problem that may arise from heavy rains or even flooding in your area.