Adding interior drain tile to a basement

Ryland · 10-16-11, 10:42 AM

Having a stairway to the outside is going to make this whole project easier.
I suspect that what is happening at the bottom of the stairway is that water is fallowing the underside of the steps down, that the soil under the steps has settled and formed channels that are leading to the underside of your floor.
An easy way to figure out of this is the case is to expand the cover that covers that stairway, go out 4 feet or more around the outside of it and see if that helps next time we get rain.
Your platform that you are removing is also right next to one of your problem areas, so pulling out that section of floor could be done at the same time, cut in a trench and add drainage, that should be done at the bottom of a stairway like that anyway, with a small floor drain that leads to the sump pit to take care of water from the stairway.
I agree to a point about the stone foundation walls, on the other hand stone walls were often put up with a dirt floor and your current concrete floor could vary well be much newer then the rest of your house, still it would be a god idea to at least score a line with a masonry saw along the wall so you end up leaving the cement that is bonded to the wall.

10-16-11, 10:42 AM	#11
Ryland Master EcoRenovator Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Western Wisconsin. Posts: 913 Thanks: 127 Thanked 82 Times in 71 Posts	Having a stairway to the outside is going to make this whole project easier. I suspect that what is happening at the bottom of the stairway is that water is fallowing the underside of the steps down, that the soil under the steps has settled and formed channels that are leading to the underside of your floor. An easy way to figure out of this is the case is to expand the cover that covers that stairway, go out 4 feet or more around the outside of it and see if that helps next time we get rain. Your platform that you are removing is also right next to one of your problem areas, so pulling out that section of floor could be done at the same time, cut in a trench and add drainage, that should be done at the bottom of a stairway like that anyway, with a small floor drain that leads to the sump pit to take care of water from the stairway. I agree to a point about the stone foundation walls, on the other hand stone walls were often put up with a dirt floor and your current concrete floor could vary well be much newer then the rest of your house, still it would be a god idea to at least score a line with a masonry saw along the wall so you end up leaving the cement that is bonded to the wall.