Basement floodding questions....

Furts

I have no idea why you asked your builder to dig outside. nor what you were hoping to find, or conclude. Whatever has been done here, be it bad backfilling, or loosening your walls, or creating new potential leaks, or whatever, is now history.

Sorry, I do not understand your comment about weep holes. You need to keep your existing walls as solid as possible and not introduce holes that will allow water into your basement.

Ultimately you would be wise to introduce air flow, and/or heating and/or possibly a dehumidifier in the basement. The aim will be to remove the damp air that is causing your tools to rust. But be realistic here - tools in a shed or garage will rust unless they are oiled or stored properly.

amigo123

I didn't ask the builder to be honest. It was his suggestion. At the time when we had the flood, I called him out and he said that he would dig a trench and then create a land drain which would take the water away from the property. Once he dug out the trench, he realised that water cannot be simply taken away due to the hard blue clay and would just sit next to the property, hence his suggestion to concrete the outside foundations, fill the trench with gravel and get a water pump. to take out excess water.

Here are some diagrams. I hope they make more sense than my description:

https*:*//s10.postimg.org/cv37v7eg9/trench-side-view.jpg
https*:*//s10.postimg.org/5du0gkwt5/trench-3_D-view.jpg

amigo123

Apologies again, but since I haven't received a reply, I'm bumping this thread. I would be very grateful if someone could tell me what material I should use to backfill the trench, so that it can be closed off.

Thank you.

Davesnave

amigo123 wrote: »

Apologies again, but since I haven't received a reply, I'm bumping this thread. I would be very grateful if someone could tell me what material I should use to backfill the trench, so that it can be closed off.

Thank you.

It doesn't matter what you fill it with. At this time of year the water level in the ground can be very high, especially on clay, so the trench is only a tiny fraction of the material surrounding your house. What happened to the material that was taken out? What do you want to do with that bit of garden? Without knowing those things we can't answer. People give away rubble all the time on Freecycle etc.

If it can't be used as a channel to a soak-away, it's useless. Even if it worked reasonably well, water could still be arriving faster than it's getting away, as it's doing on my reasonably well-drained ground just now. That's reality.

The builder is correct that you will need to create a pit in the cellar to which water can drain, so try to determine where the lowest point in the floor is and put it there. You should be able to find a suitable plastic/GRP tank to line it with. Then you'll need a Hippo or similar automatic pump which will remove the water from the tank and a pipe to convey it to the outside, perhaps to a convenient drain (although one shouldn't really do this....everyone does though!)

If you can wire the pump to a convenient socket protected by a miniature circuit breaker, well and good. If you don't know what I'm talking about, get an electrician to wire it up.

That's what most people do with leaky cellars just used for storage, which are very common. Anything else isn't economically sensible.