Help and advice needed.......water under floor boards....

nalyo

Hello all....doing up my house at the mo and the electrician pointed out thAt there was some water under the floor boards.
Ive monitored it and it seems damp and in heavy rains there is water on the floor below the floorboards.

Now the driveway is in front of the room and it does seem to slope towards the house and so water makes its way underneath?

Im looking for cheap solutions that I can do myself.
someone suggested......

dig a space between the driveway slabs and the house wall about 20cm wide and a foot deep and fill it with gravel, apparently it will help the water go down??? currently this gap was filled with concrete,

Ive tried to paint the outside wall with THOMPSONS WATER SEAL , dont know if it will help??

Over to you people. thanks will be given! (:

Incisor

nalyo wrote: »

... Ive monitored it and it seems damp and in heavy rains there is water on the floor below the floorboards.

Now the driveway is in front of the room and it does seem to slope towards the house and so water makes its way underneath?

Im looking for cheap solutions that I can do myself.
someone suggested......

dig a space between the driveway slabs and the house wall about 20cm wide and a foot deep and fill it with gravel, apparently it will help the water go down??? currently this gap was filled with concrete,

Ive tried to paint the outside wall with THOMPSONS WATER SEAL , dont know if it will help?? ...

Until you can get rid of that question mark, don't bother with thompson's water seal or spending any money, just get to the bottom of how the water gets in. Get a hose and flood the front if you have to, until water goes in and you can see what is happening.

It's no good treating a damp problem as a flooding problem or vice versa.

nalyo

Incisor wrote: »

Until you can get rid of that question mark, don't bother with thompson's water seal or spending any money, just get to the bottom of how the water gets in. Get a hose and flood the front if you have to, until water goes in and you can see what is happening.

It's no good treating a damp problem as a flooding problem or vice versa.

thanks for the advice.....what do you think of the gravel idea? will that help at all? I assume you are a builder or know about these types of problems. thanks again,

Incisor

nalyo wrote: »

.... what do you think of the gravel idea? will that help at all? I assume you are a builder or know about these types of problems. thanks again,

No I'm not a builder, I just think about these things. For your situation, I ahve no thing much to say about gravel, because we don't know how the problem is arising. If it is a straight flood through holes in the mortar, gravel combined with say an overflowing drain would make things worse.

Really you have to be able to describe the problem before thinking about solutions. If you want to try solutions like Thompson's or gravel you might have to run through a few before you fix it.

BobProperty

The water table (the natural level of water) under your house may be quite high and after heavy rains the level will rise. I have seen this situation where the sub floor area has several inches of water in it most of the year. If this is the problem you need a sump pump to keep the water level under the floor down.

If the problem is purely that the water is running off the drive into the front of the house then you would be better installing a drain across the front not just some gravel filled soakaway.

nalyo

BobProperty wrote: »

The water table (the natural level of water) under your house may be quite high and after heavy rains the level will rise. I have seen this situation where the sub floor area has several inches of water in it most of the year. If this is the problem you need a sump pump to keep the water level under the floor down.

If the problem is purely that the water is running off the drive into the front of the house then you would be better installing a drain across the front not just some gravel filled soakaway.

thanks bob, im pretty certain thats its from the drive. unfortunately i cant run a drain across the front becasue there is no where to lead the water into, the closest drainage thing is too far. and for this reason i was suggested the gravel filled soakaway.

nalyo

bob or anyone........is there a better solution then a gravel soakaway? ie. using someother material there or fill the void with concrete?? HELP!

alkip

We had a similar problem with a semi-subterranean room that we have. The best thing I ever did was to take recommendations from friends and some trustworthy professionals that I know and get a recommended company in who ended up putting a sump and pump in, result; no more problems.

Our problem was caused by (a) the rising water table and (b) an old disused drain that was in the corner of the room. "Cap the drain" I hear people say but the water has to go somewhere and the company that I got in were sure that there was other points of water ingress which would all be cured by the sump and pump approach.

If yours is a drive way caused problem that's going to be of no use and I apologise but, just to reiterate, get a good company in and listen to their advice / recommendations.

BobProperty

nalyo wrote: »

bob or anyone........is there a better solution then a gravel soakaway? ie. using someother material there or fill the void with concrete?? HELP!

http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain01.htm