Answered by Serba Corbic, licenced plumber, worked on drain issues for years.

1. Problems with drain pipes.

Drain pipes are designed to take your wastewater away from your house and into the large municipal sewer pipes. Over time a homeowner may have to deal with a plugged drain pipe. In the majority of houses built before 1980, the material used to construct drain pipes is clay. As drain ages and deteriorates, blockages will prevent the wastewater from leaving your house. Clay sewer pipes will crack over time, the pipes may separate at joints and if you have trees nearby, roots will penetrate the cracked pipe and start growing inside. Tree roots, separations and pipe breaks will inevitably block the wastewater from exiting and in the majority of cases, dirty water and debris will come up out of the floor drain in the basement. This is the lowest drain point in your house, so this is the first place wastewater will come up. When you use your laundry machine, a lot of water is expelled down the drain. Wastewater will fill up the pipe and overflow out of your floor drain.

2. Drain Snaking

While most homeowners will call a plumber to deal with the blockage, some choose to tackle the issue themselves. Many tool rental stores, such as Home Depot, will rent drain machines (snaking machines) which you can use to clear the blockage inside the pipe. If you choose to do it yourself, make sure that you rent a drain machine with a long enough cable to reach the problem area. The blocked area could be anywhere from you house to the street, so make sure you estimate the correct length. It’s better to rent a machine with a longer cable than come up short.

3. Camera inspections

The majority of homeowners will call a plumber to come and deal with the problem. A plumber is a professional who deals with drainage issues daily. They will have the necessary tools to clear the blockage in your drain pipe. Many will also carry a camera which they can insert into the drain pipe to inspect what exactly caused your drain to block. It is beneficial to homeowners to be present when the plumber is working and ask questions to understand how the drains work in their home, what caused the issue and how it should be resolved. If the plumber has a problem with you being present and observing, then they are probably not the professional they claim to be. A licensed plumber will have no problem in explaining what they are doing and educating a homeowner on the drainage system of their house. It is strongly advised to have the plumber perform a camera inspection of your drain after a blockage has been cleared. Depending on what was the problem was that caused the blockage in your drain pipe, the plumber will recommend that you either inspect the drain pipe and clean it with a drain machine regularly or in case that the pipe is cracked or broken, to replace the drain pipe. With the camera, plumber will be able to see how much of the pipe needs to be replaced and provide you with a quote.

Answered by Serba Corbic, licenced plumber who has worked on foundation issues for years.

Foundation walls of your house do a lot, they support your home and provide the space for you and your family to enjoy. Over time, foundation walls deteriorate and you will need to perform some maintenance and repairs. One of the major and most common issues homeowners have is a leaky foundation wall. In spring, when the snow starts to melt or during a heavy rainstorm, water may penetrate through the wall and come into your basement. This could cause major damage to your basement wall, floor, furniture and other contents of you house. When this happens, many homeowners will call their insurance company who will replace everything that got damaged, but they will need to call a plumber or a waterproofing specialist to come and fix the leaky walls.

A waterproofing specialist will look at your whole property, inside and out, before coming up with plan on how to fix the leaky walls. First they will look at the grading outside of your house to make sure that it is sloped away from the house. Then they will inspect your foundation walls. Main thing that they look for is if your walls are made out of concrete blocks or out of poured concrete. If they are made outof poured concrete then they will look for a crack in the wall. Once found, the options will be to seal the crack by injecting epoxy or polyurethane resin, a liquid substance that will harden once exposed. This is the most economical way of fixing a leaky wall. The other option will be to excavate the wall on the outside and seal the crack. This will involve digging beside the wall down to the footings. The wall is then cleaned by a pressure washer and left to dry. Once the wall is dry, pargingcement is used to seal the crack in the wall. Tar, and plastic dimpled membraneis applied to the wall. Weeping tile pipe, which runs around your house at the bottom of the foundation wall, is inspected to make sure water is draining away. Hole is then backfilled, compacted and made sure to slope away from the foundation wall.

If the foundation wall is made out of concrete blocks, their recommendation will be that the wall be waterproofed from the outside from one corner of the house to the other. This is due to the fact that the water can enter the concrete block wall and travel through the blocks that make up the wall to enter the basement at any point. The soil along the leaky wall will be excavated down to the footings. The wall will then be cleaned with a pressure washer and left to dry. Once dry, a coat of parging cement will be used to seal any cracks along the wall. Once the cement dries, Aqua Block, waterproofing tar will be applied and allowed to dry. Then the dimpled, plastic membrane will be adhered to the foundation wall. After the membrane, new weeping tile pipe will be installed along the footing and covered with gravel. Once the wall is sealed, soil will be backfilled, compacted and sloped away from the house.
This process will make sure that your basement stay dry.