From the river bottoms up into the hills
Head south over the Raccoon River on Fleur Drive and Gray's Lake Park is right there. From the river the south side climbs into hills, and it runs all the way down to Fort Des Moines Park on SE 5th Street. Out to the southeast is Easter Lake.
The low ground near the rivers is the first to take water when the rivers run high or a storm sits over town. Up in the hills it works differently. Water runs downhill toward the houses below, and a house at the bottom of a slope gets the runoff from the yards above it.
Older houses by the river, newer ones farther out
The blocks closest to the rivers and downtown have a lot of older houses, some on stone or old brick basement walls laid in lime mortar. Going south, more of the houses are from the middle of the century and later, on concrete block, and the newest ones sit on poured concrete walls.
Block walls on soaked clay deserve a close look. The cores inside the block are hollow and the mortar joints are the weak lines, so when the clay swells and leans on the wall, the cracks follow the joints. A crack that steps up the wall like stairs is common. A long crack running sideways, or a wall that leans in at the middle, is the kind that needs a structural engineer to look first, before anyone talks about a fix.
Where the water gets in down here
Joe finds the spot before he talks about a fix. Water along the base of a wall after a hard rain is a different problem from a damp stripe under a window, and the fix is different too.
- Downspouts that empty right at the wall, or onto ground that slopes back toward the house
- Window wells with no drain, or one packed with leaves, that fill up in a storm
- The joint where the basement wall meets the floor
- Cracks in block and poured walls, and old mortar in stone and brick ones
- Snow piled along the house that melts in spring while the ground is still frozen
The work, inside and out
Sometimes the fix is inside the basement, along the wall. Sometimes it means digging along the outside of the foundation to get at the wall from the dirt side. Joe tells you which before anything gets dug.
Old walls that are crumbling get filled and coated in cement, with a new concrete ledge poured along the bottom where one is needed. Joe also tuckpoints, puts in egress windows for basement bedrooms, and puts in and replaces window wells. Drain tile and sump pumps are a separate question, so ask Joe about those directly.
