Wet basements start with one question: where from?

Rainwater gets into a basement three ways, and each one has a different fix. It comes over the top, as surface water that never got carried away from the house. It comes through the wall, as groundwater pushed through block or poured concrete. Or it comes up from below, where the floor meets the wall. Most wet basements are the first kind. Most homeowners assume they're the second. On a sloped lot, which many older Pittsburgh houses sit on, the uphill wall takes most of the runoff, so the wet side of the basement usually tells you where to look first. Sorting that out costs nothing and changes everything about what the repair looks like.

• a puddle in the same corner after every heavy rain
• a damp line a few inches up the block wall
• white chalky powder on the wall, which means water has been passing through it
• seepage right at the seam where the floor meets the wall
• wet spots around the bulkhead doors or the basement window wells
• rusted appliance feet, soggy cardboard boxes, a musty smell in the stairwell
• a sump pit that fills within minutes of the rain starting

Often, yes, and it's the first thing we look at. A single downspout emptying at the foundation delivers everything your roof just caught, right against your wall. If the ground has settled so it slopes back toward the house, that water has nowhere else to go but down. We'd rather sell you downspout extensions and a few hours of regrading than a perimeter drain you didn't need. New and replacement gutters and downspouts sit with our Roofing work, since that's where the job actually happens.

• gutters that overflow at the same corner or seam every storm
• downspouts discharging at the foundation instead of well away from it
• buried downspout lines that have collapsed, crushed or clogged
• soil that has settled over the years and now pitches toward the house
• window wells with no drain and no cover, filling up like buckets
• a patio, walkway or driveway that has sunk and now drains back at the wall
• garden beds mounded against the siding, holding water at the foundation

An interior French drain, also called a perimeter drain, is real construction and not a coating. We break out a strip of the floor slab around the inside of the basement. Perforated pipe goes into gravel below the slab, gets piped to a sump pit, and the concrete goes back. It relieves the water pressure under your floor instead of trying to hold it back. Anyone selling a painted-on sealer as the answer to hydrostatic pressure is selling you a paint job.

• perimeter drain tile set below the slab and piped to a sump pit
• cove joint seepage where the wall meets the floor
• drainage board or vapor barrier on the wall, carried down to the drain
• a new sump pit in a basement that never had one
• dumpster, dust control and slab patch handled as part of the work
• exterior excavation and wall membrane when outside is the right place to fix it

Sump pumps fail quietly, and most people find out during the storm. Test yours by pouring a bucket of water into the pit. It should start, empty the pit and shut off cleanly. If it hums without pumping, cycles on and off rapidly, or the discharge pipe bangs hard when it stops, something is wrong now. A pump is the cheapest part of a wet basement. Replacing one on a Tuesday beats replacing your flooring in April.

• a pump that won't start, or runs and never empties the pit
• a float switch jammed against the side of the pit
• a missing or failed check valve, so water drains back and the pump short cycles
• a discharge line that freezes shut in January
• discharge dumping right back at the foundation, or into a septic system, instead of well away from both
• battery backup for the storm that takes your power out with it
• a water alarm, so you hear about it before the carpet does
• a second pump in the pit for a finished basement

It depends on whether the wall is still moving. A hairline crack in a poured wall that hasn't changed in years is a sealing job, injected with polyurethane or epoxy from the inside, no digging. A crack that keeps widening, a wall bowing inward, or stair step cracking through block joints is movement. Sealing that hides the problem for a season and nothing more. Bowing walls, pier design and anything load bearing usually need a licensed structural engineer's stamp first. We'll tell you that instead of injecting it and walking away.

• poured wall crack injection from the inside
• block wall seepage coming through the mortar joints
• leaking tie rod holes left from the original formwork
• pipe and conduit penetrations that were never properly sealed
• bulkhead and hatchway doors leaking at the sill
• cracks that keep opening, which get a structural look and not a caulk gun

A lot of older homes are part basement, part crawl, usually because an addition or a back room went on over a crawl space. You'll find that around Elkton, in Pittsburgh, in Camden County and in Delaware County. The crawl is usually the wetter half, and nobody goes down there to find out. Standing water, a torn plastic sheet and rotting joist ends are common. Damp air in a crawl space doesn't stay in the crawl space either. It ends up in the rooms above it, which is why the first floor smells like the basement.

• standing water and no vapor barrier at all
• sealed vapor barrier and full encapsulation of the space
• a dehumidifier sized for the space with a condensate pump
• soft joists, sill plate rot and beam ends that need real repair
• insulation that fell down years ago and now holds moisture
• crawl space waterproofing where a sump makes more sense than a French drain

Because humidity is a separate problem from water. Warm summer air hits cool masonry walls, condenses on them, and the whole space stays damp without a drop coming in. That's what makes the smell. It's also what grows mold on cardboard, on stored furniture and on the back of anything pushed against the wall. A drain won't touch it. Air will. If the clammy feeling reaches the first floor too, that's a whole-house job for Heating & Cooling.

• a proper dehumidifier plumbed to a drain, not one you empty by hand
• rim joist air sealing, so outside air stops pouring in at the top of the wall
• a dryer vent discharging into the basement instead of outdoors
• cold water lines sweating onto the floor all summer
• the musty smell that means something somewhere is still wet

Yes, every time. The 811 center in Maryland, PA One Call across Pennsylvania and NJ811 in New Jersey mark the gas, electric, water and communication lines on your property before a shovel or a machine goes in the ground. It's free, and in every state we dig in it's the law. We make the call and we wait for the marks. One catch: 811 marks the utility's lines, not yours. A private well line or a septic tank and field, which a lot of Cecil County lots have, won't get flagged, so we ask where they run before we dig.

• Maryland 811 locate before any exterior dig in Elkton or Cecil County
• PA One Call locate before any exterior dig in Pittsburgh or Delaware County
• NJ811 locate before any exterior dig in South Jersey
• marks honored on site, with hand digging near the flags

We do, and that's usually why people call one company instead of three. Once the basement is dry and staying dry, the ruined base trim has to come off, the swollen bottom two feet of drywall has to come out, and the flooring has to be dealt with. Doing any of that before the water is handled is a waste of your money. So we won't do it in that order, even if you ask.

• cut out and replace water damaged drywall and base trim
• repaint the affected walls once the moisture reads normal
• replace warped laminate, buckled hardwood or lifted tile
• reset shelving, a utility sink or laundry hookups pulled out for access
• knock out the smaller punch list items while we're already down there