New house- basement leaking

Can you see pipe running out away to the exterior ?

 

That picture is about as good a view as possible, can't see much at all past those 3 wires. I just confirmed those are all dead wires, the volt sensor I have beeps and flashes red on a live wire and none of those three trigger it. I measured from the wall to the box and tried to look around outside for any clue but short of tearing up the deck and the rest of the yard I can't think of any way to find the end. It's too narrow to push a tape measure through, maybe I could find a long wooden dowel or something to try to find the end from the inside ?

 

While living in Ohio - which is mostly a swamp (virtually all of the open water courses are labeled as "ditches") - I learned hard lessons about this battle to keep the basement dry. It ain't easy....... the outer foundation vertical slit trenches - filled with gravel and with a drain tube at the bottom - heading down hill away from the structure to an escape opening - only way I found to get positive results. And - because something in the earth was making the migration of moisture extreme on one end of my place, we went out several yards and made a parallel outer half-depth slit trench, with gravel and pipe as at the foundation, that drained at the same downhill location. The contractor that recommended this said it was necessary to "forcibly lower the water table" (scary thought) - that cutting off a hefty portion of the water load on the protection right at the foundation would do the trick - and it did.

Later I saw him deal with a worse situation down the road from us and while he had the home's foundation exposed (a lot of careful hoe work there believe me) they applied a tarred barrier cloth to the wall - then sprayed it with drilling mud several inches thick. When I asked about the goo, it was explained that using the mud to seal the bottom of a pond was common practice - and it would perform the same task on the foundation wall. Interesting operation - but the basement totally dried out - and they later finished it completely. I was later told that the mud was favored for the task - because if the wall later cracked, the mud would try to seal it.

 

Fish tape

 

Superseal dimpled membrane works awesome

 

I have another water related question, this time about our upstairs shower. It's a small tiled shower only but whoever tiled it didn't build it correctly and the low point is in a corner instead of the center drain. How do I go about fixing this?

 

Stupidity plain and simple. I'll read more later but as a fellow MA resident I share your pain

 

If there was no dirt or silt the elbow when you opened the access panel I can almost garauntee you there is conduit connected running out likely to the old pool location . If that conduit just dead ended outside of the foundation there would be soil carried in with the water .

 

Thanks, the guy who did most of the work is a Rhode Islander and while he did some things really well he was terrible with all things plumbing and water related. I'm wondering if I can somehow pull up just the corner tiles with the low spot and raise them?

 

Do you know what type of shower pan system was used ?

 

All the water was clear, zero dirt. I've been trying to narrow down the pool location but the last 2 owners did zero permitted work, the town has no records at all of there being a pool. Would it be possible to seal up the conduit from the inside or would that cause issues down the road?

As for the shower, no idea. Most of the plumbing seems to have been done by somebody who was either lazy or an idiot, lots of short cuts or incorrect things but at least nothing leaking other than the basement. It's about a 3x3 shower and there isn't much slope built into th floor. The low corner is obviously low, just looking at it without water you can see a couple tiles in the corner are lower than the rest.

 

After living in our house for 2 years I’m finally getting to fixing some things, one of which is a persistent water leak in the basement. It’s been hard to track but I finally figured out exactly what’s happening.

There used to be an above ground pool in our backyard, you can see it in older satellite pictures. There’s a plastic conduit with inactive wires in the basement that runs out to the back through our foundation and the previous owners must not have capped it when they took the pool down because there’s water that’s basically streaming into our basement through the conduit.

I used a fish tape to try to see how long the conduit is and try to locate it in the dirt out back but it’s as hopeless job. It’s about 18 inches deep in our basement so it’s at least that deep out back, maybe deeper. I’ve dug a hole about 20 inches deep by nearly 2 feet wide and haven’t found the end of the pipe.

So my question, how to block the water if I can’t find the end to cap it? It’s a very small diameter, maybe 3/4 inch plastic. Could I just shoot silicone into it from inside? Form some kind of rubber plug? Other ideas?

 

Cut the conduit flush, chisel out the rest of the plastic. Then pack it with hydraulic cement

 

I think I’ll try to keep digging closer to the house until I find the plastic and then cut it and capit, that should work,right? I can’t believe how dumb people can be, why the hell wouldn’t you cap the conduit when you took the Damon pool down?

Just to reassure myself, the conduit is 8 feet from the inside wall. My foundation should be about 8 inches thick, right? So if I measure 9 feet from the outside edge of my house I should be in the ballpark?

 

Keep digging.

Not sure when it was done but I installed mine 7 years ago, at the time code was at least 24 inches deep for the wiring.

Share a link to the sat pics if you can, you're looking for where the filter was mainly to put you in the ballpark of the origination of it in the yard.