Water-Proofing Our Basement....Finally!

    11 years ago we had love at first sight.  We had looked at at least half a dozen houses, and as soon as we walked in the front door of this house, we knew we were home.  The house had lived a long time being loved, but not cared for.  The curtains would blow when the windows were shut.  During wind storms the yard would be be littered with shingles.  The upstairs bathroom was rotting away.  To top all of that off when it rained our basement became a swimming pool and then a mold farm.  We had to prioritize which repairs would come first.  We did the roof, windows, doors, furnace, upstairs bathroom (which had a rotted out sub-floor that needed replaced), and then finally the biggest expense, we had to water-poof the basement.

Our pre Wet-Tek basement.

    For the last few years the basement and it's mold and mildews have been making me really sick.  I have asthma and my biggest allergy is mold.  I spent winter with an inhaler nearly permantently attached to my mouth.  Our basement contributed to a few trips to the emergency room for me to receive breathing treatments.  It was time to invest "a lot of money", and finally fix the problem.

    I called Wet-Tek for an estimate.  We had spoken to a couple of waterproofing companies, but I liked their process better.  Lance (the owner) came to the house and looked around the basement, and gave me a quote.  What he had to say made a lot of sense to me.  Their system made sense.  I was impressed with Lance, and his system.  We decided to go ahead with Wet-Tek, and make our basement healthy and useable.  I booked a date.

    We spent the week clearing all of our garbage from the basement (it wasn't really "we", I made Christopher do it).  It turns out that over the last 11 years our basement had become a hold all for anything we did not know where to put. We have no garage, or shed for storage, the basement became it.  We had to find spaces for everything.  Come Sunday night Christopher was a little frantic wondering where to put everything... let me just say that our 19 year marriage nearly came to an end because of it (as did his life).

The air cleaner, it worked wonders.

    I was filled with dread thinking about the noise, the dust and strange men in my house.  I hate having people work in the house.  I always feel so uncomfortable.  I don't want to go to far in case they need something, but at the same time I feel really uncomfortable.  I was especially dreading this time because I would be all by myself in the house with strange men.  I was looking forward to the house being done, but I was so not looking forward to the upcoming week.

    Monday morning, the dreaded morning came.  In came these two really nice, clean, polite guys.  They were so nice and friendly that I really did not think about them being "strange men", they were just Shawn and Jeff.  It was not as noisy as I thought it was going to be, and it was not as dusty as I thought it would be.

Fergus (our pup) would sit on the top step, and as Jeff and Shawn came up the stairs carrying really heavy buckets full of debris from the basement, they would stop to pat Fergus at the top of the stairs and tell him he was a good boy.  If I was coming in from a walk with the dog and they were out at their truck taking a break, Jeff would play with Fergus, and I would chat with the pair of them.  It was actually a pleasure to have them in my home.

    Each night after the guys were done, I would go downstairs and take a picture to record the progress.  It was pretty neat to watch it coming along.  I was so impressed how they plasticed off our fridge, and other few items.  They also kept this giant air cleaner going, and it greatly reduced the dust.  

Shawn putting the finishing touches on the cement.

    Thursday late afternoon they were done.  They had jack hammered my entire basement floor, layed down essentially inside weeping tile, which they then tied in to a new sump pump.  They hooked up a new battery powered pump in case of power outage.  In other words, we were prepared.  When the guys were nearly finished, Lance came to look at the job and give us our bill.  I was really impressed with this company. 

Jeff hooking up the sump pump.

    Waterproofing our basement was not a cheap proposition, but it will be nice to have a dry basement.  Last night it poured rain.  Normally when it pours, we have to keep checking the basement and make sure that the sump pump is on, and working.  Christopher went down to check the basement last night, and came up with a big grin "dry as a bone".  Wet-Tek guarantees their product for the life of your home.  We now have peace of mind.  I would highly recommend Wet-Tek to anyone who needed their basement waterproofed.  If their product is even nearly as good as their workers, then it is a marvelous product! wettek.com

    We have to wait three weeks for the cement to cure, and then we can begin to create a livable space for our family.  We can make full use of our house.  Our tiny house just got a little bigger.  This house is not just a structure to me, it is the biggest part of our family, the part that keeps us safe, warm and dry.  This house is not our starter house, it's our forever home.