Doh! That's why
Something has been nagging me ever since I got this house. I wondered if it was my imagination, or did something change? Today I think I figured it out.
When I did the lateral sewer inspection, we discovered that there were some issues with the pipes. Namely that they had no tops for the most part. This was considered bad since it could lead to sewage contamination of the ground etc. So they pulled the bad pipes out and replaced them with good, whole plastic pipes.
I am now convinced is that this is where they went wrong: not with the craptastic concrete work they did later, and not with the shock of cutting into the concrete. I think those leaky pipes were acting much like a French drain and was allowing the water that would build up in the rocks underneath flow into the drain instead of into basement.
Now I did get a tip from someone who has been in real estate for a while. What some home owners do to relieve the water pressure from underneath the basement is take a long drill bit and make a small hole in the drain pipe, below the concrete, into the gravel, but before the bend. This can be enough to relieve the pressure and keep it from the basement. Unfortunately, this is really ILLEGAL.
So I can either spend a butt load of money installing a sump pump and gutters, or drill a hole in the pipe.
Decisions, decisions.
When I did the lateral sewer inspection, we discovered that there were some issues with the pipes. Namely that they had no tops for the most part. This was considered bad since it could lead to sewage contamination of the ground etc. So they pulled the bad pipes out and replaced them with good, whole plastic pipes.
I am now convinced is that this is where they went wrong: not with the craptastic concrete work they did later, and not with the shock of cutting into the concrete. I think those leaky pipes were acting much like a French drain and was allowing the water that would build up in the rocks underneath flow into the drain instead of into basement.
Now I did get a tip from someone who has been in real estate for a while. What some home owners do to relieve the water pressure from underneath the basement is take a long drill bit and make a small hole in the drain pipe, below the concrete, into the gravel, but before the bend. This can be enough to relieve the pressure and keep it from the basement. Unfortunately, this is really ILLEGAL.
So I can either spend a butt load of money installing a sump pump and gutters, or drill a hole in the pipe.
Decisions, decisions.