Basement Waterproofing Glenn Dale

As an outer-ring suburb of Washington, D.C., the community of Glenn Dale didn’t really experience any population growth until very recently. However, as one of the locations between Washington and Baltimore, Glenn Dale has a history that stretches back to long before the first construction companies laid down the first sleepy residential lanes.

For instance, you can find the Glenn Dale Hospital in the area, a hospital that was designed from the ground up to be a quarantine site for people with infectious diseases. While the hospital was an important institution in its heyday, in the early 80s it had to close thanks to its extensive use of asbestos and lead paint, including in the children’s hospital.

Fortunately, the newer residential homes of Glenn Dale don’t have to worry about those two code violations. However, concerns about basement waterproofing in Glenn Dale are just as valid as they are in older neighborhoods like Hyattsville and Bethesda.

The Elemental Force Of Water

Thousands of years ago, the ancient peoples divided the world into a small handful of elements. Which elements made the cut were different for each civilization, but one that kept showing up on every list was water. And while water might not be an element in the way we use the word today, it’s certainly an “elemental force” of nature.

Water can level mountains and carve valleys into plains. Water can reshape the landscape with a flood, and during flood season rivers can carve entirely new banks for themselves. A flood that hits a town can be devastating, and not just because it leaves behind gallons of water that need pumping out. It also encourages mold to grow everywhere, weakens and destroys concrete, and can lift entire houses off their foundations.

Even if you don’t live in a flood zone, you shouldn’t dismiss the power of water completely. After all, even rainwater and the humidity in the air can cause problems if you don’t deal with them correctly. That’s why you need to understand basement waterproofing in Glenn Dale as much as in Annapolis and the flood zones of Alexandria.

What Basement Waterproofing Involves

Humans have been developing waterproof buildings since the very beginning, ever since the first tents and yurts. The houses of today are direct descendants of those old tents, although they use a lot more waterproofing techniques to protect both the inside of the house and the foundation.

For instance, even something as simple as the roof’s angle is there to keep water from puddling and weighing down one part of it. The rain gutters along the sides of the roof safely direct the water to a spot several feet away so that the dripping doesn’t create divots and puddles right next to the walls. Even the ground slopes very slightly away from the house so that water will tend to move away from the walls instead of towards them.

Underneath the surface, you can find even more waterproofing elements. At least for modern homes, foundations sit on a bed of gravel and sand, since they let water pass harmlessly through instead of soaking it up and putting pressure on the concrete. You’ll also usually find a pipe beneath the foundation which carries water away, and construction workers will also fill in the holes around basement walls with more gravel. And you can find all of these elements of basement waterproofing in Glenn Dale along with everywhere else with new construction.

What Our Services Involve

AA Action Waterproofing offers consultations for new building construction, but our main business is repairing foundations and basement walls damaged by water and time, remediating mold outbreaks caused by water leaks, and performing preventative waterproofing to keep the other two situations from happening. For obvious reasons, we try to encourage people to work towards preventing water damage instead of repairing it.

Basement waterproofing in Glenn Dale works the same as it does in any other community. We try to identify any problems and find out how to improve things, and then we provide you with our free estimate for how we can make your home as waterproof as possible. So if you live in Maryand, D.C., northern Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Delaware, you should contact us today and find out what we can do for you.