The Last Frontier - The Bathroom Basement

The key to any dewatering project is not to stop the water from flowing in.  No amount of water-proofing will keep the water out.  The cost would be too prohibitive, particularly with a foundation such as the station.  Water will find the smallest crack and will flow in.  The key to keeping a basement dry is to pump the water out.

Here's a "before-and-after" diagram that shows how some drain tile in a trench that is backfilled with washed 1" septic-bed crushed stone.  Technically it's called "clear" crushed stone because it's been "washed" once and contains a minimum amount of "fines" - aka "stone dust".  It's the stone dust that clogs up the septic bed system so building code requires that it be washed TWICE so that it contains no fines.  And since the maximum-minimum size of stone is 3/4"-1", it's called 1" clear septic-bed crushed stone.  So, when ordering crushed stone for drainage or septic bed systems (also for ballast at the Museum) the key buzz-words are "clear" and "septic-bed".

So we have to somehow collect the water and pump it out.  This is done two ways.  We dig a deep sump pit and we install drain tile that drains the water into the sump pit.  If we dig the sump pit deep enough, we can lower the water table within the basement so that the basement will stay relatively dry all year round.

And that's exactly what we tried to do.  We succeeded somewhat with the waiting room basement and a bit with the baggage room basement.  But the washroom basement was far from being a success.

Trying to dig a round hole 4' in diameter and 4' deep in soggy soupy mud is a bit of a challenge.  You've got water seeping into the hole as you dig down.  With your feet planted in the bottom of the hole trying to dig out a shovelful of muck, the water and clay turn into a soupy mess.  As you dig deeper and deeper, the hole gets narrower and narrower.  More water keeps seeping in which gets mixed up with the soupy clay already in the hole.  As you try to shuffle around, the mud splashes up on your boots, on your pants, on your shirt, and if you've got your face lowered looking into where you're digging, onto your face.  You come out of the hole looking as if you've been in a mud-wrestling contest.  

The only way to get the soupy mud out of the hole is to scoop it out with a small kid-size plastic pail and scoop it into a bigger plastic pail.  The plastic pail gets full so you have to hike yourself out of the hole, dump the pail and "jump" back into the hole.  Only when you do, you end up getting soaked with more soupy mud.  As you dig deeper it becomes next to impossible to get out of the hole.  All the time you're working in the dark.  And if you're in that basement room all by yourself, there's nobody around to help you out of the hole. 

So, the sump pit in the washroom basement didn't get dug as deep as it should have.  Add to that the fact that the sump pump wouldn't work properly for various reasons.

Here's a a couple of photos of what the water level looked like about 3 months ago. I've added the "bathtub ring" to show you what the water level was like - almost up to the top of the clay - which meant that the basement was permanently damp.   

The photo below shows what the water levels were like after we plugged in the pump and let it run for 15 minutes. 

In the meantime, other priorities and things took me away from the project and that's where things have stood for the last 7 years - until a couple of months ago.  I hate leaving a challenge unfinished - even if it was one that I started 22 years ago.  And so I "volunteered" to take on the project.

So where do we start!!??

The obvious place to start was in the bathroom basement lowering the 45-gallon drum steel liner as this would result in the fastest and most immediate benefit.  And besides, it would be the "easiest" of the projects to do.  

Or so I thought as we take a closer look in our next post.