In our last article, we covered exterior French drains as a way of preventing rainwater from entering your Pittsburgh home and flooding your basement. Exterior drains are a great first line of defense against water infiltration, but sometimes they’re not enough. If water is still seeping through your foundation, you might need an interior French drain.
Interior French drains are similar to those on the outside, except they are installed around the inside perimeter of your foundation, underneath your basement floor.
Yes, this will require some jack-hammering.
Interior French drains are particularly effective because they cut off water at the point that it enters your basement. When water seeps in through your foundation it enters a series a pipes that lie under your basement floor.
These pipes lead to a small hole in the floor called a sump pump well. When the incoming water gets to a certain point, the sump pump activates and forces the water out of your house and into the municipal storm sewer system or some other harmless location. (The proper choice and installation of sump pumps is a subject large enough to warrant its own article, which will be part three of this series. For now, let’s focus on getting your drain installed).
Like an exterior French drain, an interior drain is deceptively simple. It operates on very basic principles, and it might be tempting to rent a jackhammer and start tearing up your basement floor, but please don’t.
Really, don’t do it.
If you’re extraordinarily mechanically inclined, you might pull it off, but we have seen too many instances in which homeowners needed bailed out because of mistakes they made trying to do their own interior drains. People have needlessly annihilated their basement floors, they have installed the wrong pipes the wrong way, they have improperly installed sump pumps, and we have even seen people accidentally jackhammer into their house’s foundation, which can make your leaky basement seem like a minor problem by comparison.
Hire a contractor. A top-quality plumber will do the job quickly and more importantly, will do the job right. Here’s what to expect if Gillece Plumbing installs or repairs* your French drain:
We will draw lines on the ground approximately 2 feet from your basement walls. The area between the lines and the wall will be jackhammered until we reach the soil underneath. How deep we have to go depends on the thickness of your floor.
Once we reach the soil, we lay a pipe with holes that allow water to enter. The pipe is covered with gravel and dirt, then we pour cement on the trench we just dug.
If this is a new French drain, and not a repair, we might also have to dig a hole to install your sump pump.
When the process is over – usually in just a day or two – your basement floor looks as good as new (actually the new cement will probably look better than the older stuff around it) and your basement should be essentially impervious to flooding from groundwater.
If your flooding problem is particularly bad, you might need two sump pumps, but regardless, you don’t have to live with a flooded basement. Give us a call to see how we can help you keep your basement dry year-round.
*If you already have an interior French drain and you are still seeing water in your basement, you might have a clogged pipe, a faulty pump, or just a poorly installed drain. Call Gillece Services to see how one of our plumbers can have it fixed properly to avoid wet basements in the future.
