Basement waterproofing and foundation repair across Edmonton.

Basement waterproofing and foundation repair in Edmonton.

Edmonton has two very different basement problems, and which one you have depends mostly on when your house was built.

In the mature neighbourhoods, the north side, the Highlands, Alberta Avenue, Westmount, Ritchie, Old Strathcona, the foundations are 60 to 100 years old and were built with short lengths of clay weeping tile laid end to end. Those joints have shifted, filled with sediment and been found by tree roots. The wall was damp-proofed with a thin asphalt coat that stopped being effective decades ago. When water shows up along the wall-floor joint in one of these homes, it is almost always the drainage, not the wall.

In the newer south and southwest, Windermere, Summerside, Terwillegar, Laurel, the story is different. The house is fifteen years old and the owner is stunned it leaks at all. But builder damp-proofing is a spray coat, not a waterproofing system, and on a lot that was graded once and has settled since, water pools against the wall and finds the shrinkage crack that was there from the original cure.

Both are fixable. They just need different work, which is why we look before we quote.

What makes Edmonton foundations leak

• Expansive clay soil. Edmonton sits on clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. It holds water against your foundation instead of letting it drain, and the swell-shrink cycle moves the wall.
• Freeze-thaw, dozens of times a year. Water in a crack expands about nine percent when it freezes. Every cycle levers the crack a little wider.
• Clay weeping tile in older homes. Pre-1970s drain tile silts up and cracks. It cannot flex with the soil the way modern continuous pipe does.
• Grading that flattened out. Lots are graded to slope away at build, then settle over 20 to 40 years until they slope back toward the house.
• River valley and ravine lots. Properties near the North Saskatchewan and the ravine systems often sit on higher water tables and steeper drainage paths than the flat land nearby.
• Spring melt on frozen ground. Meltwater cannot soak into frozen clay, so it runs along the surface and collects wherever the grade lets it, usually against a foundation wall.

Where we work in and around Edmonton.

We take on residential basement waterproofing, foundation repair and drainage work throughout the area: