Friday, June 29, 2012

Quick fix for wet basement

How to quickly and cheaply fix a wet basement. Drill holes in the bottom of the cinder blocks and let the water out. Then fill the blocks with expanding foam. Each can can only do 3 or 4 blocks. As the foam expands it will push more water out of the blocks.

 I got this idea from a church that was being built. First they laid the blocks for the basement. Then they brought in a big truck and filled all of the cinder blocks with foam. If the blocks are filled with foam then the water cannot get into them.

 The many cans of expanding foam might be expensive, but it is far cheaper than digging up all around the foundation and re-coating the outside or digging up the floor and putting in a drainage system.

If you can get at the top of the blocks you can also fill them from the top too.  Do that in several layers of foam with time to harden in between the layers otherwise the weight of the foam will compact itself.  It still takes a lot of cans of foam to do this.  I am sure there must be a company out there that can fill the blocks with foam from a truck!

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