Prepare Your Home for Spring: A Guide to Preventing Water Damage

Jamie: 00:00:01

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. So today we're going to talk about a topic that's very pertinent to this time of year. Water. We get a lot of rain.

The ground is still frozen, especially on the north side of the house. And all that combined can create big problems in your house.

So we're going to talk a little bit today about how to set up your house, how to protect your house from water entry. And this could be from a variety of areas. You can have water entry through your roof, you can have water entry through a roof penetration.

You can have it coming through foundations, you can have it coming through your windows, all that kind of stuff. Many areas that water can get in.

And your house is really not designed to be waterproof other than the roofs decide to shed water and the foundation should keep it out. So any penetration, any opening in a wall or a roof really can lead to water issues. So let's talk about some things you can do.

Number one, keep your gutters and downspouts clean. Now, this seems obvious, but you are.

You would be surprised at how many gutters we see that are either sloped improperly, they're clogged up with debris and leaves, or the nails are coming out of them, they're falling off the house. So make sure you check out your gutters. Clean them, make sure they're sloped the right way.

If you have a long stretch of home front or back, many times the gutter will. The high point of it will be in the center, and then you have downspots on each end.

If you have a shorter house, you probably have one down spot on the end and the gutter should slope that way. Make sure it slopes right.

If you don't know for sure, check out the gutter and the water range or the water, how it moves during a storm, and that'll tell you really quick. If it's running over the end, where there is no downspout, we'll.

Well, then you have your gutter sloped the wrong way and that needs to be corrected now. So you've got your gutters, you got them clean, you got them sloped properly. That leads to the downspout.

Make sure the downspouts direct water away from the foundation. There's a couple of Ways we've seen folks do downspouts, they put them underground.

I don't necessarily love that because eventually leaves and debris washed into those underground downspouts and clog it up and then you have a bigger problem. So if you're gonna have that, make sure you terminate them above ground.

They have those little bubblers you put in the end of them so water can go into them and then back up and seep out. Or better yet, just run it on top of the ground. I'd go at least six feet.

Now, this can be a little bit of a pain when you are mowing and you gotta move them. But one of the biggest things we hear every spring is we've inspected a home, we give them recommendations.

People call in when we get a quick thaw and three inches of rain, and now they have water in their basement. And many times it's because the downspout never got extended. Or maybe the extender is aimed toward a window well and it's running in through there.

When you get that much rain in the short amount of time, especially if the ground is saturated and it can't go anywhere, you're going to have. It's going to go somewhere. And so downspouts and extenders are crucial for maintaining a dry basement.

Number two, check and repair your foundation cracks. Cracked concrete is very common. It's almost in every concrete wall or floor retaining wall, whatever.

And while visible cracks may not be structurally significant, even small cracks can let water seep in. Chances are if you see a crack on one side of a concrete wall, it's gone all the way through because concrete doesn't just crack on one side.

So I would recommend that you check the walls. Check for any additional problems that you've seen pop up. You know, because of expansion and contraction, Things change over a winter.

You're inside, you're hunkered down. You're not looking around outside. Go outside, check your foundation walls for any kind of cracks you might see.

Seal these with waterproof caulking or masonry. If they're concerning, call a professional to see if you can get those professionally sealed. Many times you'll see in a basement.

If it's unfinished, we'll see basements where they've professionally sealed these cracks with epoxy. And those are very effective, they're very strong and a good way to get your wall sealed up from allowing water entry.

So number one, keep your gutters and downspouts clean. Number two, check and repair foundation cracks. Number three, ensure proper grading around your home. When we do Home inspections.

Probably the number one defect we see is improper grading. I feel like we could write this up. On almost every inspection. You'll see some area of the house that has a sunken area. It has a negative grade.

They've done the landscaping in such a way that water cannot escape from the house or away from the foundation wall. They hump up the mulch so that it looks pretty but causes water to run right toward a corner or something.

And so proper grading around your house is probably the top reason or top way to keep water from going into your basement.

Now this seems obvious, but when water has a hard surface to run on and away from the house, the chances of it getting into your foundation are very slim. So make sure you have proper grading.

And if you have negative grading now and you just add some sand or any kind of dirt, that's really not going to solve much because water is going to go through that, settle to the hard packed stuff underneath and still run toward the foundation.

So the best way to do that if you're trying to regrade is add the right kind of dirt, clay, and then put a vapor a like a landscape fabric on that, which is going to limit the amount of water that can go through that. Make sure it's sloped away from the property.

And that way when you do get heavy rains, especially on the ends of your houses that don't have gutters, especially if you have like a two story gable, that's a lot of rain and water running right off the siding onto your ground.

And so we would recommend proper grading, putting direct dirt, putting a landscape fabric, and that just helps kind of make one smooth surface for water to travel away from your foundation. Number four, install a sump pump. If your home has a basement or is prone to flooding, installing a sump pump can help prevent water buildup.

Make sure it's working obviously before a rainy season, and make sure you got a battery. Now there's battery backup systems. There are water activated backup systems.

That's usually done when you have city water and it uses city water pressure to help evacuate the water even if the power is out. That's a nice feature to consider if you're doing that or if you've had sump pump failure in the past.

And whatever you do, just make sure it's working. And you know, if it's running non stop, you might want to consider putting in a second one to help mitigate some of that.

Number five, we touched on this just a little bit flood resistant landscaping. Choose plants and landscaping materials that absorb Water and reduce runoff such as mulch, gravel or rain gardens.

And avoid planting too many trees or shrubs near the foundation, especially trees as they grow and they expand. That's added pressure onto the concrete wall and that can create small cracks over time, letting water in.

Especially if you have don't have poured concrete, you have a concrete block wall. Or if you have an old house that potentially even has brick, those are more porous, they're going to allow water in more naturally.

They're not as strong as poured concrete. So avoid planting too, too much, too close to the foundations.

One of my pet peeves is when you see somebody either freshly landscaped their house or maybe it's a brand new build and someone will come in and plant a bunch of shrubs a foot or a foot and a half away from the foundation wall. And this is just very short sighted because you know how big these shrubs get. They get three, five, seven feet wide.

Well, now it's crammed against the foundation. The roots are going to potentially affect the wall and it's just a mess and you got to yank them out and start over.

Number six, seal your doors and the windows. I talked earlier how the main two areas water comes in is roof and foundation. But let's take those out.

Think about all the windows you have in your house. Is the flashing done correctly behind them? You probably won't know that, but you can look for loose caulk, you can look for cracked caulk.

Things dry out, the sun hits them, they freeze whatever that is, an avenue for water entry big time. And those are some of the things that can create the biggest mess over time. Creating mold.

Because it's seeping in around the window, you don't notice it. It gets in the wall, it continually has a moisture source. And now you're growing mold in the wall.

Unknown until all of a sudden you see what's going on. So. So if you have old weather stripping around windows and doors, replace that with newer stuff and waterproof those windows as necessary.

Number seven, check your roof.

Now, this seems obvious, but just as other components in your home will change through a season of freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing, so will components on your roof.

You can have shingles that get torn, you can have flashing that come loose, you can have nails that pop up through shingles, creating a small little hole in a shingle where water can just seep in slowly. You may not notice it for a couple of years and then all of a sudden you have a water stain on your ceiling. And you wonder where did that come from?

Many times it's just related to one single nail popped on the roof where water and snow melt is seeping into the attic and then through the insulation and then into your ceiling. So if you don't feel comfortable going on your roof, hire somebody, call an inspector, call us.

We'd be glad to come out there and do a kind of a maintenance roof inspection to advise on what type of repairs you need up there, whether it's resetting some nails, covering up some nails, replacing a few shingles, whatever. That is a great place to start before the heavy rains come in the spring or thunderstorms in the summer and create a problem.

Number eight, water resistant materials in vulnerable areas. For example, consider using some water resistant materials like vinyl or tile for basements.

If there's a potential that you're going to have a flooded basement and you have carpet down there, the carpet's pretty much going to have to be thrown away every single time.

If you can use something, even epoxy, which is basically, you know, just adheres to the surface, you're not going to have water under it and have to rip it all out when you're all done.

So this is not so much keeping water out, it's if water comes in, what materials can you have down there to help safeguard you from having a major mess down there? Number nine, create an emergency plan for flooding. Think of all the components that might be in your basement.

If your basement suddenly had 2ft of water in it, what would you do? It's not safe to go down there if there is electrical components that could be submerged. So you need to have a plan.

Familiarize yourself with local flood risks.

If you're in an area, you know a river is rising and you live close to it, you're in a floodplain, and all these other things you've tried have limited effectiveness. You know the water is coming. Get key documents in waterproof containers.

Have an emergency kit ready with essentials like flashlights, water, batteries. Just be ready to go somewhere for a few days or a few weeks. Have a kit like that ready in the event that there is flooding in your house.

Number 10, inspect your drainage system. Think about storm drains, trenches, culverts, anything that typically gets rid of a lot of water. And you need to look for clogs and backups. What's.

Has debris clogged it now? If it's underground, obviously you're not going to be able to tell.

But look for areas that obviously funnel water around your house or away from your house. And clear any debris from outdoor drains and add additional drainage if you notice anything like that.

So another tip to consider when we're talking about keeping water away from your house is ventilation in damp areas. And this goes more toward what we talked about for number eight, which is water resistant materials.

This is more about it's going to be moist in a crawl space or a basement. How do we mitigate that moisture? One of the biggest problems we see in crawl spaces is lack of ventilation, which has led to mold growth.

And mold growth just simply occurs when it has the right combination of air, moisture and food. And so if we can take away one of those, it's not going to grow.

So let's take away the moisture because you can't take away the wood, which is their food, you can't take away the air, but you can take away the moisture. So improve the ventilation in a crawl space. This is can either be mechanically through a fan system.

You could improve drainage in a crawl space through drain tile and a sump pump if you don't already have that. And just in general, make sure the basement and crawl space is well ventilated to reduce the humidity and prevent mold growth.

And one last thing to consider, review your insurance coverage. What happens if you have a flood? Is it covered if it's from outside in?

Is it covered if a pipe breaks in your basement or a water heater leaks or anything like that? Know what you have. Know that when you call, you're going to be covered when you have a problem with water or flood damage or anything like that.

So just some tips to make sure you keep water away from your house as much as possible. What to do if you do have flooding and who to call if that occurs. Hope these were helpful to you. Please share this podcast with all your friends.

Get the word out there before the spring rains hit and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening.

This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space Podcast podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. For more information about Gold Key Inspection Services, go to goldkeyinspect. Com.