House Calls Renovation Advisors

We live in a beautiful, historic old home in the north end of Toronto. Our home was built around 1936 and just like every homeowner, we constantly maintain our level of exterior and interior maintenance to ensure that all systems are functioning properly.

Early this Spring, we noticed that our basement walls and certain portions of the wood basement floor were suddenly very wet. Even worse, mould had developed on the moist surfaces of the painted concrete block.

We called in three “wet basement” companies to take a look and give us their opinions and quotes. All said the same thing: we needed new waterproofing and new weeping tile. The cost to excavate the exterior adjacent to the foundation walls and supply and install new waterproofing and tile ranged from about $25,000 to $35,000. Apart from the extreme price, this approach would also have destroyed a large portion of this year’s flower-filled garden.

In searching for a better solution, we contacted House Calls Renovation Advisors to assess the situation. Jay came by and after looking carefully at the basement and the exterior, came to the conclusion that there was a much less expensive and much less invasive approach that should be attempted before going to the extreme measure of excavation.

Jay carefully considered the options, and then designed a surface drainage solution that accommodated all the storm and rainwater runoff in the area. His approach has been to examine and understand all the inter-related contributing factors, and then over a period of two months, properly deal with each one of them appropriately. This saved us from jumping into the one-shot waterproofing “fix” at a big price. His work has saved us literally thousands of dollars, as his approach has cost 80% less than the original quotes.

As you know, this has been a summer of almost constant rain, with rainfall in record volumes across most of Southern Ontario. Despite the wet weather, with Jay’s help, our basement has gone from being very damp and mouldy all the time, to relatively dry most of the time. Occasionally on very hot and humid Summer days, we experience slight dampness, but we understand this is due to condensation, rather than water leakage.

We are very happy to have had House Calls working with us on this problem and would highly recommend using Jay’s services when problems arise.