I mentioned some moisture problems in the basement in past posts. Most of these are caused by runoff that is sitting against the basement wall. That water keeps, in some locations, the lower half of the limestone foundation wet. Correcting the drainage around the house, i.e. sloping the grade away from the building, should alleviate this problem.

We also found a corner in the basement that was soaking wet at the very top, starting right under the ceiling. The drywall crumbled under a touch and the brick behind showed plenty of efflorescence. Interestingly enough, this location was above the outside grade. How could this wall be wet this high up?

Well, the secret room shed light on all this. That said, let’s start on the outside with the front stoop and its little porch roof. The picture below shows a small drain pipe/downspout for the porch roof in the corner that runs through the stoop slab into the building.

A roof typically should drain away from any building walls. This is not the case here with the roof drain right up against the façade.

Let’s now look at the downspout under the stoop, in our secret room. At the very top remains a small, rusted out, piece of galvanized downspout. At the very bottom is the sewer connection to which the downspout once was connected with the disintegrated downspout pieces to the left. And in between is a nice stretch of very wet brick wall.

This wall got soaked every time it rained. I have no idea for how long this has been going on. What I do know is that the secret room had been hidden and walled over for many years.

As a quick fix, we cut the downspout just above the stoop slap and installed an extension that drains into the front yard. This keeps the water out of the basement and will give the wall a chance to dry out.

For a long term fix, we would like to remove the existing roof drain, slope the porch roof away from the building, and add a little scupper with a rain chain into the front yard.