Basement Waterproofing Bethesda

Bethesda is one of the most affluent, promising small towns not just in Maryland, but most of America, with a prestigious presence hosting many respected institutions. The National Institutes of Health campus is located here, Lockheed Martin, which makes America’s military aircraft also has a presence here, and even one of the great videogame companies of the world, Bethesda Softworks, originally called this town home, as the name implies.

Bethesda’s great fortune, however, only extends to the people and places on the ground itself, not to what’s going on underneath the feet of the residents. And that’s where a potential problem lies, slowly gathering its forces and chipping away at the structural integrity of the places that people call home. It’s a seemingly harmless phenomenon at first, after all, it may only be dampness or a little bit of water in the basement. But a wet basement can lead to some serious, expensive problems without basement waterproofing in Bethesda.

A Slow Threat

Water is not commonly regarded as a big issue because many people find it hard to believe it can do any real harm, unless it’s part of a hurricane. While everyone is familiar with the damage that water can do in a flood situation, the most common way for water to hurt a home is through a slow, methodical, unrelenting process of pressure and/or erosion.

For example, if water is visibly forming on walls or pooling up from the floor, this is simply because concrete, as solid as it may appear to be, is actually porous, meaning it has tiny spaces within it that can admit water through. If enough water permeates the concrete that will come through regardless of how solid the wall looks. But if water is coming through cracks that have formed in the walls or floor, that means that instead of gently penetrating the concrete, a large amount of water has been steadily applying pressure to the wall or floor. That pressure eventually found a weak point and forced a break through sheer brute strength. Now that the damage has been done, it will accelerate, as more water gets through, more water exerts more pressure, and structural breaks become more frequent and serious.

Water can also indirectly hurt your basement not by acting on the basement itself, but working on the ground that the foundation rests on. Even though your basement is a hole in the ground that has been covered by concrete, that concrete—at least when it was poured—was intended to rest on the ground underneath to help distribute weight. If water moves some of that dirt away, parts of the foundation may rest on nothing, and this severely imbalances the way the weight of the entire home is spread. This can eventually cause a house to tilt or even move in different directions, bringing in not just water, but slowly tearing the house apart. Basement waterproofing in Bethesda can do something about this.

A Professional Response

This complex interaction between architecture, geography and climate can mean many possibilities for how a wet basement occurs, but AA Action Waterproofing has the experience and equipment to analyze and deal with basement waterproofing in Bethesda.

When you come to us with a problem, we take the time to visit with you and provide a sympathetic, expert consultation. We look at the water where you find it and then we go the extra step with our equipment and knowledge to track the water down, find out where, and how and to what extent it is coming in. Most of important of all, we find out why the water is getting into the basement, which is a critical step if a permanent solution to the problem is going to be implemented rather than a short-term, half-measure solution.

Depending on the extent of the damage and the nature of the situation, there may be several options for waterproofing. One of the best prevention measures, for example, is to apply a membrane barrier to the foundation itself, which requires digging a trench around the home to access the outside of the foundation. If regular, significant amounts of water collect in the basement because of the home’s location, then rather than keeping water out, it may be more efficient to redirect it. A French drain system with a sump pump can collect water that is trying to spread throughout a basement, and pump it out to another location.

Whatever your particular wet basement problem is, solving it requires an understanding of both environmental factors and the unique structural characteristics of your home. AA Action Waterproofing brings in the tools and expertise to deal with these factors.