Crystal Minnesota Wet Basement and Foundation Waterproofing
Crystal Minnesota is one of our favorite cities with a lot of old school Twin Cities Charactor but the area marked by Crystal, New Hope and going into Plymouth is very wet ground, the good news is Crystal has the most stable ground condtions of the three.
Most of the homes in Crystal are older with a large portion going back to the 50's and 60's so no drain tile was used when the foundations were built. There's lot's of commercial and industrial buildings in the area, we also take care of wet factories and since most of our work is done on the exterior, there's no need to disrupt business.
Crystal Minnesota Ground Conditions
What we do find in Crystal is slightly more sandy conditions that allow enough foundation settling that cracks develop in the corners and since downspouts are also near, basements can get very wet. If you look around at your neighbors, you'll see longer downspouts that help get the water further away from the foundation. but sometimes you'll also see lake and pond levels that are extremely close to the level of your basement floor which means any extra rain could mean a very wet basement.
Crystal MN home with a Very Wet Basement
This was a preventable situation, if you look close there's a sprinkler head to the left of the corner and cheap downspout extensions to help get the water away from the foundation.
What you can barely see is a concrete patch right behind the big blade of grass to the right of the corner. Someone has patched the vertical foundation crack, which is good, but unless they dug all the way to the footing, they won't be able to patch most of it.
Drainage to close to the foundation corner will wash away the soil under the basement footing causing small movements and cracks, usually mirrored on both walls. While the home is most likely not going to fall over, water will start leaking into the basement.
Real Waterproofing stops the water before it moves through the crack at a fraction of the cost of a drain tile system. This should also stop or slow more damage to the wall.
Crystal MN
Foundation Settling
The basement of this home was finished with drywall, insulation and plastic sheet. It also had a working drain-tile system but unfortunately it was either plugged up in this area or too much water was overwhelming the system and it was spilling out instead of heading towards the sump basket.
This home is nearly identical with another settling foundation that has cracked and allowed water to enter the foundation.
The solution was Real Waterproofing, stopping the water outside of the home. By addressing the cracks in this area, we were able to help the drain-tile "slow down" or not see as much water.
We were also seeing water build up in the window well (next to the right side) which was fully refreshed to meet our standards and just look good.
Crystal MN Wet Basement with Iron Ochre
We run into iron ochre in a few areas around the Twin Cities and Suburbs. This nasty substance is almost like an orange jelly that comes in with the water.
This will clog up and block a drain-tile system, installers will let you know that the system must be regularly cleaned to keep it from plugging up everything.
Great Lakes Waterproofing has a better solution, why not stop the water completely? Instead of water management and then adding in precautions that must be adhered to, let's take basement water out of the equation completely.
This home-owner had several quotes, all of the other drain-tile contractors said the original system needed to be dug up and replaced, pretty extreme with no guarantee that the new system will last any longer.
