Let it rain! Let it rain!
We had a heavy storm this evening. Got somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 inches of rain in a little over an hour.
Discovered two wonderful surprises:
1) The dining room has a bay window. While it was raining, I walked over to look out the window… and discovered the rug on the floor was wet. Yet, when I checked the ceiling and walls, they were absolutely dry !! How was it that water was coming UP through the floor ? Was it somehow splashing upward from the opened space beneath this window? I checked the basement. All I could confirm that the part of the floor that was wet was definitely sticking out OVER the foundation. Terry’s very upset about this. Understandably so. Once the rain stopped, the floor no longer seemed to seep up water.
2) Terry and I just happened to be in the basement at the exact moment that water started to slowly stream in from the base of the south wall of the basement! About a half-a-dozen trickles moved slowly towards the north wall, where the drain is. It had been raining for about an hour when it happened. My dad was on the phone with me at the time. He talked about me getting some sort of paint-like substance and painting the walls (and about 6 inches out from the walls on the floor) with it… in order to prevent seepage. I question whether this would be effective. Sounds like you’re basically delaying the inevitable.
He then said that we could have someone come in and dig out the perimeter of the basement walls and put in drains. Sounds expensive, especially considering that the only harm that was done by this was that we had a few boxes and a couple of rugs get wet. Besides the slightly-moldy smell, I think we’ll be alright. Still, this is a serious problem to keep an eye on.