Home repair: Regrading may end basement leaks

Q. I enjoy reading your column and always find it interesting and informative. My question is about water that occasionally seeps/leaks into our basement in two areas.

The house is 45 years old with a concrete slab basement and poured concrete walls. On a couple of occasions, we’ve experienced water seepage in one area where the concrete wall meets the slab. The few times this has happened is when we get a significant amount of rain after a very long period of no rain. In another area of the basement where this has occurred, it’s happened if I water the bushes on the outside of this wall too much — again, after a very long period of no rain. (Now during a period of drought, I only sparingly water the bushes in this area.)

Also, the soil in our area has a significant amount of clay. In fact, when I have planted landscaping in both of these areas, as well as other areas of our yard, I hit nearly solid clay after digging down only a foot or so.

I’m wondering if these factors — significant rain (or watering) after a period of extended drought, along with the clay soil surrounding the outside of the poured concrete walls — are the cause of the occasional water seepage or if there is some sort of leak going on that needs to be remedied, even if it happens only occasionally under these specific circumstances.

A. When clay soils dry out, they absorb water very slowly. Once the topsoil is saturated, the clay soil below does not easily absorb any excess water, and it runs down the foundation walls until it finds the weak spots at their base.

The leakage you suffer tells me there are grade problems around your foundation. If the grade sloped away gently, water would slowly penetrate the topsoil and give the clay soil time to regenerate, while the excess would flow away from the foundation.

You obviously do not have a serious problem, but you may be able to eliminate it completely by correcting any negative or flat grades where there are no bushes.

Q. I’m retired and live on the Fox Chain O’ Lakes in Illinois. During the summer months, the party noise goes on until 2 to 3 a.m. from the bar down the street and my neighbors. I want to remove the drywall in the bedroom and put some sound-deadening insulation in the walls and in the attic. I have triple-pane Pella windows.

A. I doubt very much that doing only what you have described will materially help. There are too many variables. Your best bet is to hire an acoustical engineer to look over the conditions in your house and recommend a strategy, if one is possible. You should be able to find one in the Yellow Pages under “Acoustical Consultants” or a similar listing.

Q. I read your column every week and have learned much from your advice over the years.

I live in South Burlington, Vt., but own a summer cottage on a small lake in Cambridge, N.Y. All of the cottage (except the bathroom) is rough and uninsulated with high ceilings, about 15 feet at the center. Because we enjoy the quiet of the lake so much, we keep the cottage open from early April through mid-October, spending all of the summer and most weekends in the spring and fall there. My goal is to insulate and finish the interior with natural pine, but that is not in the near future.

I currently use a Cozy brand space heater (with no fan) to heat the three main rooms on cool spring and fall days. I probably run the heater 20 times a year, usually just in the morning and evening. The total area heated is less than 1,000 square feet. The Cozy heater does a poor job at best, heating the small area around it to comfortable while the rest of the heated area is simply bearable. The chimney into which this heater is vented is in need of repair, and I have been looking into ways of heating more efficiently and evenly.

I have been reading about ductless red-flame heaters, specifically the vent-free propane heater by Mr. Heater, and am interested in your opinion of these products. This heater claims to heat 1,000 square feet evenly with 99 percent efficiency. The idea of a vent-free heater is appealing because I can save the expense of repairing the chimney.

Are these heaters all they claim to be? If so, is there a brand or model you would recommend? One thing I failed to mention is that we currently heat with propane and have a 100-gallon tank hooked to the current heater.

A. Be aware that any unvented — vent-free — propane, natural gas or kerosene heater discharges its combustion gases into the room in which it is located. Moreover, it depletes its oxygen supply. This is probably of little concern as long as the cottage is not insulated and paneled, because there is likely enough leakage to replenish the depleted oxygen and dilute the combustion gases. But what will happen when you have the cottage tightened up?

I have no experience with these heaters, but at their low purchase price, you are not risking a lot if they do not work as you expected.

A safer option would be a Rinnai sealed combustion (it gets its combustion air from outside), vented-through-the-wall heater, so you would not need to repair your chimney while enjoying the safety of a vented heater. Rinnai heaters offer the choice of either propane or natural gas. They are considerably more expensive than the heater you inquired about, but they are undeniably high-quality products with which I am well acquainted. If you plan to keep your cottage for many years and pass it on to your children, the higher initial cost will soon be forgotten.

Q. I’m an avid reader of your column that appears in the Daily Herald and appreciate all the good advice you provide.

In one recent column regarding the smell of a homeowner’s well water, you mentioned “slime ring at the water line.” I have that in all three of my toilets and don’t know what’s causing it or how to stop it. Sometimes the slime comes out into the bowl, and it’s rather disgusting. I also see the same brown slime in the brine tank (where I add my salt).

Do you know what I can do to solve this problem? I’m on a well. I have a Culligan water softener, and when I remember to do it, I use a gallon of bleach that the softener “sucks up” through an attached wand.

A. Since your present system is not solving your problem, you may want to try something else. Find the name of the nearest Kinetico dealer at www.kinetico.com. Kinetico dealers offer free water analysis and advice. Your well may need to be shocked or receive continuous injections of Clorox bleach.

Q. Thanks for getting back to me about aluminum roofing shingles. I found aluminum shingles by a company out of Salt Lake City called Aluminum Lock Roofing. I even had them send me prices and samples. They sell the shingles for $225 to $265 a square. But I have not had any luck finding anyone who has experience with them. It seems that they are more popular in the Western states. Do you know of anybody in Pennsylvania in the Greensburg/Pittsburgh area who does this kind of work?

A. Sorry, I don’t. I have checked with other manufacturers and have not found recommended installers in your area. As you found out, these shingles are more popular in the West, but they are also used on the East Coast.

The materials alone cost about three times as much as asphalt/fiberglass shingles. Installing these shingles is more difficult than installing asphalt shingles and requires considerable training. It takes 4 to 4½ hours per square for experienced installers, so you can imagine how much longer it would take someone just learning — and you can’t be sure the shingles will be installed properly. Prudence suggests that no one should even consider using untrained installers.

Q. I’m emailing you about a fiberglass tub that has noticeable brown rust deposits that I can’t seem to remove. The rust stain was on the tub when I purchased the house in October 2011. I tried a number of household chemicals, and still no results. I was hoping that CLR (Calcium, Lime & Rust Remover) would resolve that nasty rust stain.

A product I used years ago worked wonderfully. It was called The Works, and Wal-Mart used to sell it. I can’t seem to locate this product, which truly worked like it said it would on hard rust stains, with far less elbow grease and sweat. What would you recommend I try?

A. You should be able to find The Works in Ace and True Value hardware stores, as well as in Kmart stores, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. You can also buy it online at www.acehardware.com.

But first try white vinegar. Soak a white towel in the vinegar, put it on the stains and cover the towel with plastic wrap to prevent evaporation. Leave it overnight.

Fix for faucet: A kind reader who experienced the same problem as the reader who had a bad smell only at her kitchen faucet sent me the following:

“We had a similar problem with our kitchen faucet. We never had a problem in twenty-something years, then the sulfur smell only in the kitchen. It took years of troubleshooting till we found the answer. It was the hose in the faucet sprayer. Changed the faucet with another brand and smell is gone. Can’t tell how much money we spent to try and find an answer to our sulfur smell!”

Thank you for your input on this troubling problem. Couldn’t you have replaced just the sprayer hose at a lot less expense?

Hopefully, you won’t develop the problem with the new faucet’s spray hose, but if you do, at least now you know where the odor is coming from — and so do I and all the readers of this column. We are grateful to you for figuring it out. Sorry it cost you so much before you hit on the solution.

Ÿ Henri de Marne was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via email at henridemarne@gmavt.net.

© 2012, United Feature Syndicate Inc.