Entries Tagged 'Exteriors' ↓

Water prefers to go downhill

This is one of the most frustrating things I see in older homes. The home has cast iron or clay gutter drains below grade that connect to the sanitary system, and they are failing. Rather than spend the often daunting amount of money to repair the pipes, the homeowner or their hired contractor decides to abandon the old line and “daylight drain” the downspout(s).  There are applications where this works, but it can also be bad choice if the drainage for the location is not correct.

This is a proper application of a daylight-drained downspout. Note that the ground slopes away from the downspout and the building, and the foundation is a slab-on-grade with no basement.

However, if you live in the Mississippi River Valley, you will rarely see these circumstances in older homes. First of all, the houses almost always have basements. Second, the soil is often heavy clay that saturates quickly and does not absorb much water. Third, the ground often slopes back towards the building. Therefore, by draining the water close to or at the house, doesn’t drain it at all! The water simply collects until it can cascade into the basement of the house! As it does, it rinses away precious mortar and soil, and begins to compromise the foundation. What is more damning about this, the downspouts are often at the corners of the structure which is the most vulnerable pier location in the foundation- transferring the shifting to two walls instead of just one.  It can also affect those that live near you. Observe:

My uphill neighbor's downspout...which floods my basement.

I am working with my neighbor, who speaks very little English, to solve the 1200 square feet of water that heads straight to my foundation in every rain. I am adding piping to carry the water to the front slope of our yard and to assist in irrigating the yards, without irrigating my basement.

Another issue with daylight draining is the creation of large icy patches in cold weather. An “elephant trunk”-type of downspout solution is popular among house-flippers. It costs very little, and keeps the water from simply running down the house. It does not counteract slope issues however, and it spreads the water out wherever it lands, creating a huge problem for those using adjacent walkways in icy conditions.

And yes dear friends, the alley walkway is immediately below it.

Draining your gutters to daylight can also cause problems for motorists in icy conditions. Consider a downspout, one that carries the load of a 2500 sq ft roof, drained into a paved alley. And now consider that it is at the high end of a 1/5 mile alley and will help to re-ice it as the alley covering melts while the roof drainage replenishes the supply of water to ice-over. Yes, I have seen that also.

But who cares, right? Drainage rolls downhill...

There are solutions to all of these problems. They do not have to be expensive, and often they can be VERY beneficial to the environment. I will go over the solutions in my next post.

Just bear this in mind, water is your home’s worst structural enemy in a masonry home. The cheapest solution is often actually the most expensive when taken over the long term.

And if you are wondering why your yard slopes toward your home, the most likely culprit is landscaping. Yard grading was likely correct when the house was built. But add 100 years of sod, seeding, planting, mulch, edging, and thatching, and you have a gradual buildup of the yard surrounding the house….

In Saint Louis, our sewer system was designed with some foresight, but not enough to carry our current loads. Contrary to what many people may think, foresight does not mean that every future variable has been thought of. There are parts of the Saint Louis sewer system that predate the civil war! For those that have trouble with dates and history, the Civil War occured before: American Idol first aired, before the invention of the cellphone, before the invention of the telephone, before the invention of the light-bulb, before the invention of television or movie film, and before the invention of the internal combustion engine (AKA before cars).As such, the builders of the first sewers in Saint Louis used brick, mud, mortar, and wood to construct them.

Sounds kind if rickety? Well, some of those sewers are still in use! Many of them have been modified (photo of coating) to to modernize them and extend their lifespan. Many methods have been used to do this, but one of the most common has been parging them – much the same as we parge rubble-stone basements to keep out water.

The River Des Peres (or River Des Pieux as many Saint Louisans call it), was once actually a river (large stream anyway). It only became the sewage beheamoth we now know when it started being used to carry raw sewage from western City developments (such as the Central West End). It was later re-engineered into its current form by City engineers trying to contain the foul nature of its contents. There is a fantastic article titled “The Harnessed Channel: How the River Des Peres Became a Sewer” byMichael Allen posted at preservationresearch.com. This article does a fantastic job of describing how city systems evolve, outlining achievements that have been made, and giving some idea of the daunting tasks that now face MSD and the STL city engineers to modernize the system.

The problems we now have are not the fault of the system engineers from the last 150 years. While they could account for population increase, they could never have accounted for the lack of greenspace (to absorb water) we now have. Everything is paved and there is very little opportunity for rain water to be absorbed back into the soil.

They couldn’t account for one or more showers/baths per day-per person. They couldn’t predict the amount of commercial water usage and waste that is now created (AB uses thousands of gallons every day and has wastewater as a result. Add to that a lack of wild foliage to use the water, and now you have a problem of excess water that must be contained, routed, and treated. We send it into the sewers where it (hopefully goes to a treatment plant) eventually goes to the Mississippi river, but this is a process mined with potential problems.

As the monster storms we have had this season have repeatedly proven, water can get into almost any space with the right conditions. Basements are below-grade and therefore extremely succeptible to flooding. Water can come through the walls as a result of hydrostatic pressureand foundation cracks. Water can enter the basement as sewage through a clogged sewer line. Water can even “wick” through the concrete or stone walls as it is attracted to the dry conditions inside the home via the masonry basement (and masonry is a fantastic moisture wick!).
There are many plans and options to help handle sewage backups and hopefully divert future problems. The Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) outlines some of these options on their website. MSD has done quite a bit to upgrade and modernize the system, such as promoting the use of rain-barrels (photo and info) used by customers – and MSD has offered them at below-market pricing in some cases.

Now comes the warning…there are many companies that are in the business of stopping basement water infiltration. While these companies provide a valuable service, it is always good to examine the cause of the problem and the potential effects. Some basements have structural weaknesses resulting from water infiltration. Others suffer mold and mildew accumulation. Most commonly we see damp conditions and ruined possessions. But don’t start throwing your money around yet!

First, you need to determine where the water is coming from and why your basement is its chosen path of egress. Below I have included a list of items to consider before taking any further steps to waterproof your basement.

1. Is the water in my basement sewage or groundwater? If sewage, you need to contact a licensed plumber who specializes in drainlaying. If groundwater, read on.
2. Where do my gutters drain? If not connected to the sewer, are they simply flooding my yard until that water comes back into the house? If they are connected to the sewer, is the line intact and not blocked?
3. Are my gutters clogged and therefore overflowing?
4. Does the ground around my home slope away from the house?
5. What soil type do I have around my home? Is the soil saturated beyond the ability to absorb new water?
6. Still unsure of the problem? Contact a general contractor to look at the situation and determine the problem. Most (including yours truly) will do a walk-thru at no charge to determine a course of action.

The MOST COMMON CAUSE of BASEMENT LEAKING I see is improperly drained downspouts. Are yours drained properly? Don’t answer too fast! Take a look at my next post about daylight draining and clay soil around the old house.

There are things in life one should never skimp on. The most common I hear are:

1. Lunchmeat
2. Cheese
3. Toilet paper

There are things in construction that bear the same simple rules. I would say the same for all construction, but at the very least (from a safety standpoint) they are:

1. Electrical
2. Structural (framing/masonry/concrete)
3. Roofing
4. Plumbing (remember we are talking about human waste and potable/drinking water)

Lets hit on roofing. There are lots of crews in this business that will bid lowest for installing the same stuff as the reputable guys (same stuff meaning the same brand materials). This leads to the thought “it is the same brand and material, right? It has the same warranty, right? Why pay more than the lowest bid?”

Well, if you hang a 300lb mirror on the wall with one 100lb-rated hook instead of three or four, it is still installed. Right? At least until it falls off the wall.

Standard nailing for an asphalt shingle roof is usually 4 nails per shingle. Some manufacturers even want five, and once you get into slate/tile/composite, it is totally different. I you don’t follow the manufacturer’s installation specs, the manufacturer won’t honor the warranty. See Tamko’s site info on shingle installation requirements by clicking here.

We are currently repairing some missing shingles on a roof that is only six years old. The new shingles we are installing in the repair are the same brand and color as the original, but they don’t match. This is because the six-year-old shingles have faded. It looks kind of odd right now, but they will blend better over time as the new shingles weather.

Why does a 6 year old roof need shingles replaced? No there was not a hurricane. The original roofers installed new decking over the original, and installed the shingles with 3 nails per shingle, and they did not install underlayment (tar paper)!

The homeowner paid $8000 to have the roofing done six years ago, and after I let him know the cost to re-roof it now, he said that he had already paid the 8K to do it before, he didn’t want to pay again. “Repair it” he said. So now we are repairing it by installing tar paper and shingles wherever they have blown or fallen off- with 4 nails this time.

But- the original contractor was cheap and they were FAST!

We are doing good repairs, but the only real lasting repair in this case is to redo the whole roof. And he will have to do just that long before the shingles’ lifespan is out. Our patches will hold, and we will warranty them, but other spots on the roof will continue to come apart.

Oh yeah- and there is no warranty offered or honored by the shingle manufacturers if you don’t install underlayment and you don’t follow a 4-nail minimum nailing pattern. Also, the nails have to be the proper depth, proper nail length, and nailed in the proper locations on the shingle.

So now the homeowner finds out that there is no warranty from the manufacturer on the shingles.

So he called the original roofer – repeatedly – and was unable to reach the original roofer. In fact (big surprise) the number has been disconnected. We have performed two major repairs so far, and he will still need a new roof in the next five years. If he had spent $2500 to $3000 more when the roof was installed and hired a licensed and insured contractor, he could have saved the repair costs which are already close to the $2500 difference, and would not be looking at a new roof in a few years.

Time period – 25 years

Amount spent on the current roof – likely to be a total of $25000 when the new roof is installed in a few years.

Amount to do it right the first time – $11000

Savings if it had been done right in the first place – $14000

But those original roofers were the lowest bid, and they were so FAST!

Buyer beware! The lowest bid does not mean the best bid.