Home Improvement Tips, Guides, Reviews

I've had to remove all the content about basement leaks and whatnot from this site, as they are simply getting you to fix problems you shouldn't have.

Actually, your problems started before you bought the house.

First, most people build square boxes for houses, which are inherently weak structures. Take an empty packing box and sit something heavy on it - or lean against any single corner - it will collapse.

Buildings should be created out of triangles (like Swiss chalets) or domes (geodesic ones are actually composed of triangles.)  These are the strongest buildings known, and will take much stronger winds than any other. (The nearest surviving structure to the Nagasaki nuclear bomb was a dome. The U.S. military has been using domes around Alaskan radar installations since around World War II - in order to survive gale force winds.

Second, The ground around any house isn't stable. It's more like an ocean in very, very slow motion. Land on a hill is trying constantly to get to a lower level. If there's any slope at all, it will be moving from year to year. Just enough to crack anything you put in it. (You can see this action by looking at telephone lines and fences which were originally upright, but now are leaning downhill gradually over a couple of decades.

Meanwhile, if you put a box-type basement in, the land and water are constantly working to fill that empty space. So cracks and leaks are inevitable.

If you hire someone to come and repair them, you are going to have them back again within a few years or a decade, regardless of how good they do their job.

The solution is actually to build your basement like it's a barge which floats. Put in reinforced concrete-and-steel ribs just like a ship. And a "bilge" with a central drain to pump any leaks out, although this is really just an emergency scene (like from a leak from above, which also shouldn't happen.)

Such a barge-foundation has ample room for your electrical and plumbing to be run underneath, for any alterations or additions. As well, an emergency shelter can be engineered right into it for everyone's safety.

Your building then is secured to this much as the decks of a ship are secured. As the land shifts, you can jack up that foundation to move the entire house. As well, a set of reinforced concrete "pontoons" could be added (particularly on the down-hill side) to enable this well in advance of the inevitable. Your jacks go between the pontoon and your "barge" foundation and simply right the whole building.

Third, modern construction is only designed to last about 50 years at most. The days of hundred-year-old buildings are long gone. If you buy a house, it's often better to simply invest in demolition and then replacing with a modular, factory-built home which can be moved in over a couple of days. In that case, you are looking for a good location first, and then what style of house you can get transported and installed. Ideally, you can be living in a brand-new home within a month or less from closing on an aged, run-down fixer-upper.

If you invest in a good barge-type foundation for it, then you'll have a very secure building ready for the rest of your life, and a ready return should you ever decide to sell it. While the other homes around yours are having crews come to expensively repair their inevitable cracks and leaks, and then come back again to repeat the process - you have only to hire a crew to come in with jacks to level the building as it floats above all the ground shifts and rides out the slow-motion waves.

Something to thing about when you are buying or building your next home.