Water update – Just wing it

Ok, turns out I might have overreacted. Things aren’t quite as bad as I thought a couple of days ago. When I saw the water continuing to pour through the foundation walls, I hit my first real low point of this process. It wasn’t the fact that it was slowing me down. That is frustrating, sure, but I can eventually come around and keep the frustrations in perspective. It was the thought that we might have somehow tapped into an underground spring or something, which would require a whole lot more work to deal with, assuming I could figure out what to do. (After stressing out for a while about the spring, I realized that probably wasn’t the case since there isn’t any spring near that area and the water was so close to the surface.) I was at a loss and didn’t even know who to turn to for advice. Heather suggested I call her friend Darren, who “has worked on thousands of foundations.” Darren listened to me describe my problems, and then said the best advice he could give me was “just wing it.” Not really what I wanted to hear, but not a big surprise, either. There are so many factors that could be contributing to the problem that it would be pretty amazing if someone could diagnose it over the phone. So, I decided to wing it.

I had a few ideas of what I could do, thinking that I might end up renting a mini-excavator and digging out beyond the foundation so I could capture the water before it got into the footers, then directing the water

away. The extra cost, time, and work were deterrents, as was the thought that I really didn’t know what I was doing. It seemed like “winging it” should be less expensive, at least until I have to pay to correct the mistakes I make when I first started winging it! Instead, I decided to go looking for the water by digging holes with the posthole digger. I figured I would try to figure out where the water was coming from, then it occurred to me that it could help to relieve the underground pressure by giving the water another place to go. I’m not sure it that’s true or not, nor whether any of my holes or the dry mortar mix I put in a couple of places helped, but the water started slowing down significantly by the end of the day on Sat. Most likely, it was due to the dropping water table, but doing something about it made me feel better anyway.