The House - The Leaking Foundation from Hell - Part Two

So - 30yrs of settling, five years+ of no rain, followed by rain fall so severe that it twice closed I-85, and that little 2.something earthquake that gave the house a solid shaking must have had its effect on the foundation wall.

Fine - So be it! I came to realize that there was only one thing to do - dig out the foundation wall, pressure wash it, fix the mortar where needed, seal the wall with tar, cover that with thick plastic, and install a french drain(1). This plan, unlike the others, started off sounding difficult, and rightly so.

First order of business - Dig out two, twenty five feet long section of foundation wall to a depth of about five feet. Half of the bushes had to be removed, the other half were severly trimmed but survived:


This is just the beginning


It's hard to tell, but trust me - that's 25' long, ~5' deep


Heat stroke sets in.


Guess which side has had its first pass with the pressure washer.
(Hint - Don't take a camera out of an A/C'ed home into GA humidity,
unless you like the appearance of mystery "fog" in your pictures.)

Yet More Pain!

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1 - A French drain, or "freedom drain" if you're that type of person, is where you dig a trench, line the trench with landscape fabric (which water can flow through, but soil cannot), add an inch or two of pea gravel, lay in a 4" slotted corrogated pipe, bury that in several more inches of pea gravel, fold over and seal the landscaping fabric, and then bury in sand and/or sod. I should mention that the trench and pipe should be traveling downhill by at least a 1 percent grading. As hydrostatic tension builds in the water, instead of putting pressure on the foundation wall, the water will take the easier path of traveling down the pipe.