Serving Concord
Groundwater & Basement Water Intrusion in Concord, NH
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 sand plain the city sits on is a very good aquifer.
It is, and coarse sand passes water sideways with very little resistance, so a rise in the river becomes a rise underfoot a long way from the bank with nothing arriving over the ground. That is why some cellars here fill on a schedule that matches the gauge rather than the rainfall, and why grading does not touch it.
Two weeks of thaw and the ground frozen underneath it.
Nearly always. A whole season of snow comes away over roughly two weeks onto ground closed to a depth that will accept none of it, so every bit of the volume travels at the surface. Rain during that fortnight adds rather than substitutes. By the end of March what counts is a working pump and an outlet not frozen shut.
Cracks open in the cellar wall every spring.
Frost accounts for nearly all of it on walls of this age. Moisture in the soil alongside freezes, expands and presses inward, and the wall yields slightly where it can without fully recovering in the thaw. The change therefore turns up in March rather than during any storm. Drier ground going into the freeze does more than any repair in spring.
Read it with the local conditions on the Concord page.