Slick Way To Dry Up Wet Basements

Slick Way to Dry Up Wet Basements FARM HOME Houses 10-5-6 "We dried up our basement by covering it up," says Leo Schempp, Hurley, S. Dak., who came up with a simple idea to get rid of his wet basement problem. Schempp says he had a severe problem with water bubbling up across nearly the entire surface of the floor and running in tiny streams to a drain at one end of the basement. The problem got so bad no conventional solution could possibly help. To solve it, he covered the wet floor with 1¢-in. steer corrugated roofing, laid in place so that all corrugations run toward the drain at one end of the basement. He simply cut around poles and other obstacles. Then he poured 4 in. of concrete over the top of the steel sheeting, covering the entire floor except for the last 4 ft. around the drain. All water runs down the channels under the concrete and out into the open where it then runs down the drain. "I could have laid sheeting at the end perpendicular to the rest of the floor and channeled water all the way to the drain," says Schempp. Water continually runs down the drain but the new floor stays completely dry. He says that even if the steel sheeting under the floor should rust away, the water channels formed in the concrete would remain. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Leo Schempp, Rt. 1, Box 67, Hurley, S. Dak. 57036 (ph 605 648-3584).

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