Anyone have a rock basement?

[jhr513]

I have been wanting to build a man cave in my basement since I bought my house a few years ago but have had a few occasions when water will seep through my basement walls after several hard rains. I think I have solved the problem for the most part and have not had any water since I reworked my down spouts and added drain pipe to them but I really dont want to take the chance of building a room and then getting more water. Has anyone been successful in waterproofing a rock basement? If so what did you do?
Thanks

[Quads]

How well do you trust the water barrier / paint on stuff for block walls to keep the water out?

[Soxking]

I think that the better solution to the problem would lie on the outside of the wall rather than the inside. "Footing drains" or "Drain tile" are a total pain in the neck to put it, but they work to keep water from getting to the foundation wall in the first place. And as long as you have a trench dug around the foundation all the way down to the footings, you may as well coat the foundation with some waterproofing compound. Not that asphalt coating - that's only damp-proof and can't take any hydrostatic pressure.

[jhr513]

How well do you trust the water barrier / paint on stuff for block walls to keep the water out?

I have never had any experence with these so im not too sure about them. The walls have been filled in and somewhat smoothed with morter mix so this is a possibilty.

[jhr513]

I think that the better solution to the problem would lie on the outside of the wall rather than the inside. "Footing drains" or "Drain tile" are a total pain in the neck to put it, but they work to keep water from getting to the foundation wall in the first place. And as long as you have a trench dug around the foundation all the way down to the footings, you may as well coat the foundation with some waterproofing compound. Not that asphalt coating - that's only damp-proof and can't take any hydrostatic pressure.

I looked at and have talked to a few people about putting in an outside drain tile and didnt really come up with anything. The house is built into a hill and the front wall and only a few feet of the side walls are under grade. I thought about putting a french drain and sump around the interior of the basement and building my room inside of that so that if the water does get through the walls it has somewhere to go.

[Lightning]

We had a leak in our basement, we found it about a month after we bought our house:mad:. I found a company called Permacrete, they fix the leak from the inside and guarantee there work for as long as you own your house. But here was the best part it was like $500, a lot cheaper then digging up the foundation. Permacrete is a franchise company, I am not sure if you have something like that in your neck of the woods but it might be worth looking into. Here is there website http://www.permacrete.ca/
just to give you an idea of the product in case there is something similar in your area. Also they gave us a free estimate and told us before hand if it was something they were able to fix or not.
Good luck with the leak I felt your pain.