180: Is it Even Possible to Remediate a Basement?

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Is it possible to remediate a basement? Today we are going to find out. This is a question that came through our email community. We sent out a blast. We asked for topics, and this is one that came out. I've talked about this some other times in the past, uh, but I wanted to readdress it here because many people have basements, and it's a concern. And so, you know, a lot of times there's like a fear around this, right? It's like, oh, is it even possible to do this? Should I even try? Should I just leave? Should I move? Well, I can't just move because I live somewhere where every house has a basement. What do I do? Do I just need to move to another city where, like, people start spiraling? You guys, it's. I see it, I talk to people, I hear how it works, right? And so I. I don't want that to happen for you. So I'm going to talk through Top line. Is it possible to remediate a basement? Short answer, yes. Spoiler alert. This is probably not the best way to get you to listen to an entire podcast. If I just tell you, yes, you've listened to 50 seconds and you're in and you're out. But I hope you listen. I'll give you some of, like, the core reasoning behind this. I'll say this. We do find a lot of problems in basements. Okay? So let's talk about why there are problems in basements. The biggest reason that there's problems in basements is because a basement's underground. And you're not only dealing then with water issues that happen inside of your basement. Like, if you have a washing machine in your basement or a pipe leak or something like that, you're now dealing with gravity that never stops. Gravity is just constantly working, right? There's. There's no way to stop it. And the reason you're dealing with gravity is because outside, any water that gets into the ground outside is going to move downward through the ground, and it's also going to move toward dry. So that's something that's called hydrostatic pressure. So water wants to go from wet to dry, it seeks out dry. That's where it goes. And so if your ground outside is wet, it's going to be looking for dry. It's going to be moving closer and closer to your house because generally, it's going to be drier the closer you get to the building, because rain isn't falling directly on top of of it or whatever it might be. And it's gonna start working that way, and then it's gonna get to your foundation walls. You're like, oh, this thing is dry. And then it's gonna keep trying to get through that, right? Think of it as, like, this, like, living thing that's trying to not drown almost, right? Like water's trying to get away from itself in a way. And so your basement now becomes the refuge for the water. There's no water in here. This is where I wanna go, right? And so it's almost like this magnet for all the water to come towards there from the ground. And this is the big challenge in basements. And this is why people ask, is it even possible to remediate a basement? And so the answer is yes. Like I said before, the concept of how you remediate a basement isn't any different from how you remediate any other space in your house. Right? If you're thinking of it from the interior perspective, right? Let's forget about waterproofing and all that stuff, what I just talked about. Let's just talk about the inside of the basement. Right? You can remediate a basement just like you can remediate anything else, okay? If there's drywall and it's impacted, you remove it. If there's framing and there's mold on it, you clean it and you surface, treat it afterwards, right? The problem with basements and the way that remediation generally works is that you have to stop the source of where the water came from, right? So if I was in a bathroom and I had to remediate a shower area because the shower was leaking, then you take out the shower, you remediate the area, you put in a new shower that doesn't leak anymore, and there you go. Now your problem is solved, right? The problem with your basement is water keeps coming, right? And so this is the challenge. A lot of times, what we see in basements is actually water coming in from the outside, and it's a waterproofing failure or just if the house is older, just it wasn't even constructed properly that's allowing water to come in. And it feels like this constant Thing that's always going to happen. And so what I would say to this is that if you truly want to remediate your basement properly and the source of the water is not some, something inside the house, it's not a pipe leak, it's not, you know, a utility, you know, a washing machine or something like that, but the source of the water is actually from the outside. Then the only way your remediation is going to be successful long term is if you fix the waterproofing problem that allowed it to come in. Okay. If you don't fix that, it will come back. And now the problem with that is you're going to spend money to remediate your basement and the remediation will work immediately. And this is like, this is a thing to, to really make sure that we clarify. Like, how do you define, like successful remediation? Right. Some people would define it as, I got rid of all the mold. It's a success. That's a short term success. The true success of it is that it doesn't come back. And so you have to address the cause of the moisture that created the mold. Right. And so remediation can be successful in the short term. We came in, remediated the basement, we removed some walls, we cleaned, we did what we needed to do. If, you know, if that was part of what was going on down there and now the basement, if we came back in and retested the basement and we did, you know, surface testing on the areas that were remediated, that can all be clean and it could all say there's no mold there. And then the next time that it rains or the next time that your sprinklers, you know, turn on and build up enough moisture to work its way down, the water starts coming in again, the problem starts again. Okay. And this is one of the biggest frustrations I've seen with, with people when it comes to their basins and they spend a lot of money on their basement and getting it fixed and then the problem comes right back. So because they didn't fix the root cause of the moisture issue, right. They remediated the inside, but they didn't do anything about the outside water coming in. So let's talk about that for a second because there are certain ways to do and not do it. So I'm going to be up front re. Waterproofing the outside of your house is not cheap.

Doing it the right way is not cheap. Doing it the right way means. Let's think of it this way. If, if you were, if you were breathing. Okay? So let's assume that your basement is breathing, right? And you don't want to breathe what's outside of the basement walls. You don't want to breathe the water. Okay? So I'm gonna give you a couple options on what you would do in order to stop yourself from breathing something that's coming to you. Option one, you stop it coming before it hits your nose, before you breathe it. Right? That's option one. Option two is you breathe it in and then you try to fix it once it's inside your nose, before it gets into your lungs. That's option two. Which one would you think would be more effective? It would be much more effective to just stop it from getting into your nose before letting it come into your nose and then trying to put a barrier there to stop it from getting into your lungs. And that analogy, and that scenario is the difference between two different waterproofing methods that exist or primarily exist that I've seen done. And it's the core problem with selecting one or two of them. Right, let's talk through option one. This is the more expensive way to do it. It's the more effective way to do it. Option one is getting. Getting it before it hits your nose. Getting whatever you don't want to breathe away from you, so you don't ever breathe it in the first place. This is the equivalent of properly waterproofing the exterior of your house. So when water does come towards your house, it hits your waterproofing and it can't get inside. And that's it, the end. No more moisture that comes in. Right. You don't have to worry about it coming in and what might happen when it comes in or anything like that. Right? So that is option one. That is the true way to properly waterproof. Okay? Now, the problem with that, it is expensive. It requires digging out around the outside of your house. I mean, it's a big thing, right? And I understand that. So the alternative that has come up over the years is trying to waterproof the inside of your basement. So the main couple ways that this happens.

Option one is they'll do what they call like an encapsulation system, where they will put plastic against the exterior wall from the inside. So if water comes through the basement, it hits the plastic, and in theory, no more water comes in. And then they think magically, that solves all the problems. Right? That's the equivalent of breathing something through your nose and then trying to put a barrier, like, at your throat before the air gets to your lungs. Right. You're already letting it in and now you're trying to stop it once it's in. And do we think that you're going to stop all of it? The answer is no. Right now the problem that happens with a barrier like that, and it's, and it's not always just a plastic barrier. The other option that they use for the same concept is spray foam, which I'm hugely not a fan of, where they'll literally spray foam.

It's called a spray foam insulation. They'll spray this stuff, this expanding foam on your walls, the, the inside of your exterior walls, right? And it'll be an insulation barrier. And they're like, oh, water can't come through. It'll hit this. It'll stop. That's cool. The water will stop. But guess what's going to happen in either of those scenarios? If water comes through, mold is going to start growing on the backside of the plastic area. And so the building material is find the plastic area. And if you're with the foam, it'll start growing on the back of the foam. And all of the walls that the foam is covering, water comes in, it gets trapped. You do not want to trap moisture. Okay? So if you think of these two options, option one is you're stopping the water coming in before it ever gets into your building. At that point, stop it. That's fine. There's no problem that comes from there. If you stop it once it gets into your building, into your house, you now have trapped moisture inside your home in the walls. And that is going to create more problems in the house. Okay? Now they'll tell you like, no, it's perfectly sealed. Nothing can ever come out of there. I will tell you that that's not true. I see it all the time. And unfortunately, it's just the way it is. It's a much cheaper option. So people opt for this, but it causes longer term problems if moisture comes in. The other thing is you don't see the moisture coming in for a long time. You end up having hidden mold growth behind all of this stuff. And what happens, the air pressure in your house moves from downward to upward. It goes from bottom to top is called the stack effect, right? And so as, as air pushes upward through your basement, it's going to pull up through those wall cavities that are closed off, right. That are kind of sealed. It's going to move up into the house. And that stuff gets up into the house. So it's a big problem. The other thing that I've Seen. Although I haven't seen it as much lately, I've seen it older houses where they actually, like, build an internal drain, like, trough immediately against your exterior wall on the inside of your basement. So, like, if you're in the basement, you can literally see, like, a moat. Like, think like a castle. There's, like, a moat that goes around the castle. You can literally see, like, a little drain trough that catches, quote, you know, catches water. Collects water that comes through your wall, goes into this trough, and then moves it to a drain on the inside of your house.

No, like, it's not what you want to do. Right. But I understand why people do this stuff. It's because it's cheaper. And so going back to the initial question, is it possible to remediate a basement? Yes. But before you get into basement remediation, I want you to think of what the prevention piece looks like, too. And you have to look at those two costs together. You have to add those costs together. The remediator is likely not going to do the drainage stuff and the waterproofing. And so you need to see those costs together and not get through the remediation and then be like, oh, man, I now have to pay for waterproofing or drainage on the outside of the house. Because now you're, like, committed at that point, and now you feel like you have to spend more money and you might not have the money to spend, and it puts you in a really tight spot. Right. So if you look at it holistically and you understand, I got to remediate the inside of this place, I also have to waterproof the exterior so it doesn't come in. It's going to cost X amount of dollars. All right, can I do this? Should I do this? What are my options now? How do I look at it now? And if you think of it that way, you're going to save yourself, like, a lot of frustration and money by getting halfway through the process and then realizing you have to do something else. So that's what I got for you on basement remediation. But the answer is, yes, you can. You just have to prevent the water from coming back. So hope everybody has a good one. We'll talk to you next time.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most. Sat.