Serving Fairmont City
Groundwater & Basement Water Intrusion in Fairmont City, IL
Basement seepage, failed sumps, and hydrostatic pressure against the foundation are extracted and dried, and the path from the ground is identified so the loss does not repeat. Groundwater and basement seepage are extracted and dried only after the path from the soil is identified — a wall, a slab, a drain, or a failed sump. Drying the interior without stopping that path returns the same water to the same floor.
Frequently asked questions
The levee is between the village and the river.
Which means the ground here is below the river whenever the river is up. That is the normal arrangement on this floodplain and it works, but it has a permanent consequence: rain that falls behind the levee cannot drain out by gravity while the river is high, and has to be pumped. Local flooding here is often entirely unrelated to whether the levee held.
The basement is wet when it has not rained.
On the bottoms that usually points at the river rather than the weather. The water table here is connected to the river stage, so it rises as the river rises regardless of local conditions. A basement can take water during a dry week because rain fell several states upstream a few days earlier.
Much of the surrounding land is industrial.
It is, and generations of rail and industrial use have left a lot of made ground and fill across the area. That material drains quite differently from the natural floodplain soil, sometimes far faster and sometimes not at all. It means neighboring parcels can behave very differently despite identical elevation.
These questions come from the Fairmont City page.