Is Hydrostatic Pressure Causing My Basement to Flood

One reason that your basement may experience leaking could be due to hydrostatic pressure.

What is hydrostatic pressure?

Hydrostatic pressure is pressure from a body of water at rest. The weight of the water itself is heavy, leading to pressure.

How can this affect my basement?

After heavy rains, the soil surrounding your home is saturated with water. The stronger the storm, the more water is held in the ground. The more the soil around your house is saturated, means the greater amount of pressure that is placed on your basement walls.

Water weighs around 60 pounds per cubic foot; this can mean thousands of pounds of pressure can be placed on your basement walls! With this hefty amount of pressure, water can find an easy way into the basement through a crack or gap in the foundation walls.

What can I do?

This often leads to the question, what can be done to prevent this or lessen the damage? Unfortunately, even the most well-built walls won’t be able to stop thousands of pounds of hydrostatic pressure, but lucky you can relive some of this pressure. At Woods Basement Systems we recommended installing a WaterGuard French draining system inside of the basement.  WaterGuard is installed around the perimeter of a basement where the wall meets the flooring. These drains will help collect some of the water that leaks in, sending it to the sump pump to be discarded of.

For more information on WaterGuard or if you are looking for a free estimate, click here.