Keeping our Feet Dry

Growing up in Birmingham, we lived in a single story house on Pine Tree Drive that had a full, below ground, basement.  This basement was used for several purposes including a place for two bedrooms for my two older brothers, a laundry room for the tons of clothes that were cleaned there every month and a workshop where my oldest brother built more than a handful of automobiles.  That basement also served another purpose; it was a receptacle for the excess rain water that fell about our house on several occasions.  Over time, the drainage system around the foundation walls failed to perform as it should and on two successive Christmas mornings, after days of hard rain had fallen, we had a flooded basement.  There is nothing like having to mop and squeegee water before and after opening presents on Christmas morning.  But that was our plight in that house in east Birmingham that was ill-prepared to handle the water that collected around it.

That memory is still fresh in my mind and the crisis of dealing with the flooded basement floor and soaked carpeting in my brothers' bedrooms is now just a curiosity.  It was, however, a few years later, upon the planning of their new house in the country, a motivation for my mother to proclaim that she would never again have a house with a basement.  My parents, instead, built a house on a short foundation wall and had a crawl space under their new house.  A crawl space that gave her comfort that she would never again have to mop water on a rainy Christmas morning but one that would give many a repairman great consternation as they crawled on hands and knees over rocks and stumps under that house.  It gave this writer such grief that I vowed to one day have a house that did have a full basement and that puts us where we are today with our house in Through the Woods.

Our decision to build the foundation with concrete blocks meant that we had to do a thorough job with water-proofing and our builder assured us that the system he often used was going to do the job of keeping the water out.  That system started with a well designed drainage system at the exterior footing area so that any ground water that collected there would drain properly away from the house, and not seep into the basement.  The walls would be coated with two layers of a tar-like substance that served to fills any cracks or voids in the block and mortar joints and lastly a layer of plastic material would adhere to the walls.  This plastic mat will serve to shed any large amounts of water that may collect around the foundation during periods of heavy rain when ground water will potentially be the highest.

Front corner of house showing the tar coating

Another shot showing the area around the footing that will have the drainage pipe placed

Drainage mat applied to foundation wall

Mom sweeping out rain

As the house continued its' progress, we have had to deal with some rain.  Just prior to getting the roof put on, we had two good rains that completely soaked the floors and had us out sweeping and vacuuming water.  My mom and I make a good sweeping crew and at least I know that is one thing I can do well.

As the foundation walls are being back-filled with dirt all around and the drainage system is covered up, we are hopeful that we have done all we can to make sure we will always keep our feet dry.