Are you in love with old turn of the 20th century craftsman style brickers? Yeh, me too. I love those old victorian craftsman brickers. Many were built from 1900-1940, with later models being less brick and some wood.
Many are brick all the way down the foundation to the footing. The term bricker, can refer to a brick apartment complex, as well, but to a home buyer, bricker usually means a home made of brick, probably some version of craftsman style, totally made of, or partially covered with brick. Some of these old foundations will look like concrete foundations, but will actually be skim coated concrete over brick foundations. Many skim coatings were done pretty badly, with hollow pockets you can tap and hear hollow sounds, to whole concrete basement wall sections falling off the original brick wall, as a result of the old mix not bonding to the original brick. Contractors did not have good masonry glues in those days.
Without proper home drainage installed, when these homes were constructed, which builders around 1900-1940 seldom did, groundwater ran right through the mortar holding the bricks in the foundation, weakening the structure with age, as it flushed the lime out of the mortar, literally, turning the mortar to sand.
The mortar, which may be a century old, and has long since turned to sand, has lost its’ lime from the foundations exterior and interior concrete walls in the form of effloressence, a white chalky substance that most often is deposited on the inside and outside of a foundation wall where a groundwater problem is evident at ground level on the outside and anywhere down the basement wall where groundwater may run through cracks as well as at the floor.
You may not see what I am describing if the basement has been painted with a white waterproof dry lock paint, or if an exterior foundation paint was used on the outside of the foundation. The dry lock paint won’t stop the groundwater from entering the basement either without protection from hand excavated french drains. The basement walls will rust stain again, when the next groundwater floods the foundation wall area, and produces the same groundwater event that caused the original groundwater damage.
To stop the groundwater leaking into basements and crawl spaces is the same slow process that it took to saturate it in the first place, in reverse. Time, a half season or so, is most often required, for best results, as soil settles and dry wells break in.
Once the aqua duct for the french drain is excavated from the bottom of the grade looking up, and all the loose dirt is out of the excavation, the sheeting rain water will run on the bottom of the carved aqua duct that starts the french drain, even without the perforated pipe or river rock installed.
The sides will not cave in under heavy rains during installation. If the hand excavated french drain is properly carved by an expert hand excavated french drain installer, usually through bearing clay and dirt, it will withstand heavy multi-inch rain days, during which time the home drainage installation crew may not be able to work, but the work in progress will function and survive intact, to be plumbed and filled with rock and weed cloth when the storm ends.
A properly located, engineered and installed hand excavated french drain reduces the saturation of groundwater by pulling groundwater away from the foundation wall faster than it can soak in a compacted area, without which there would have been added groundwater weight and saturation on the foundation or in the yard, that would have produced continued worse groundwater leaking or saturation as time went on.
Hand excavated french drains remove groundwater from the foundation area each time it rains hard. Over time, this is literally starving the foundation area of groundwater, and subsequently drying the foundation area down to the foundation footing, as a result of the hand excavated french drains stopping the saturation of rain water that causes hydrostatic pressure, which causes the leaking of the groundwater below grade. Not springs or underground rivers as some would have you believe.
Never place a french drain directly on the foundation wall, as the groundwater will have nothing to contain it, and will run down the outside of the foundation wall, foundation vent, or window well, and wind up below grade in your crawlspace or basement quicker than it would have before your “installation” of rock on the foundation wall. Don’t let them talk you into that one folks. 18″ away from your foundation wall with a compacted grade to it from the wall will be your objective for placement of the hand excavated french drain in most cases, unless it is lawn drainage.
Never expose a concrete foundation by removing the dirt and replacing it with rock unless part of a properly installed footing drain. Professional advice is best when it comes to understanding what a footing drain really is. Read articles about footing drains on this website if you want to really understand the why and who not of footing drains, and why so many of them don’t work or cause more problems.
Trees and shrubs, planted snugly around the foundation, grow roots on the cool wet wall year round. Roots penetrate the mortar as it turns to sand in old brick foundations. Trees and large shrubs, planted on the homes foundation, will produce root pathways along the foundation wall, for groundwater to enter below grade.
If a crawl space is under the home, groundwater will have very little dirt to saturate,before it comes up on the inside of the crawl space. The groundwater will almost always come in where the basement floor meets the foundation wall, where there is a basement. The basement wall and the floor are almost always poured at different times, and there is a built in air space at the union of the foundation wall and the basement floor that is called the “cold joint”.
Love those old victorians with brick foundations. Don’t get caught owning one with a groundwater problem that cannot be fixed economically, or at worst, not fixable at all, or can be only be marginally fixed with drainage.
Due to the fragile nature of old brick foundations, I would rather not did back a foundation wall that I know has soft, and therefore, really bad mortar strength. Damage to the foundation wall is possible when backfilling, even using a hand compactor next to the side of the home, which would be required during compaction. Do not let a contractor compact your foundation area with a backhoe bucket or a vibration plate compactor. He could crack entire walls beyond repair, or even cave them in all together leaving you a nice hole to fix. Ouch!
Risk reduction, in the form of a home buyers drainage “due diligence”, available free on this website, when buying a home cannot be overlooked.
Fight back with home drainage knowledge and AAA Home Drainage. It is your responsibility to not be a home drainage victim from a financial, structural, or legal perspective, due to not enough home drainage installation and groundwater problem solving knowledge. This does not need to be the case for anyone, anywhere.
Acquire drainage knowledge confidence and an empowered energy that I know your home drainage due diligence will give you, as a result of your diligent study. I can make inspecting a home drainage problem a no brainer for you every time. You can accomplish this easily and protect your finances, health and peace of mind.
It is impossible to give a one size fits all answer to every home drainage problem. It would be nice if I could just put up one big graph on the internet and within minutes everyone could cross reference potential home drainage symptoms, to causes, to home drainage solutions, and find every answer to every home drainage question with a click.
Well not yet. I am working on it with this web site. It just requires the old fashioned way. You must earn it by reading and becoming informed.
It just doesn’t work that way. No chart of symptoms. Too many variables, and many unseen, buried, or seller un-disclosed home drainage problems of the past and present, or just former contractor or homeowner attempts at home drainage that they won’t tell you, that may be impacting the home drainage problem.
You remember the old story about how, if I give you a fish today, you will eat fish tonight; but if I teach you to fish, and you fish, you will eat fish for a lifetime, and feed as well as teach others. This is to be expected. Good fishing!