So this is weird…

For the past few days I’ve noticed that a small section of the basement carpet has very wet, damp spots. Like someone just spilled water there. It’s a concrete floor, and there is no noticeable trail that brings the water there…just a few spots and then damp for about a 1’ perimeter.

I’ve ‘looked up’, there is no water or damp spots coming from the ceiling.

It’s all I can do not to cut a line down the carpet to see what’s going on, but then I’d be stuck with the spliced carpet unless I get a rug to put there.

Any ideas???

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ronin1069,

Pull the carpeting up, from the walls, back to that spot?

What else you going to do? You have to find out where it's coming from.

My guess is you'll find cracks in the floor under the carpeting.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep cracks in the floor.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
Any ideas???

Do you have a dog?

No Dog.

I’ll pull the carpet back this afternoon.

We’ve not had very much rain recently, not sure why it would be coming up now.

Assuming it is cracks…is there something I can buy at Home Depot to fill them?

Extremely slow leak from a cracked/broken underground piping. Had this "unexplained" problem several years ago. Had to dig up the floor and fix.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Extremely slow leak from a cracked/broken underground piping. Had this "unexplained" problem several years ago. Had to dig up the floor and fix.

Joy.

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

We had same problem with finished basement. Turned out the carpenter who installed the baseboard molding had driven one of the finish nails directly into the drain pipe that was hidden behind the drywall, allowing just enough leakage to cause a damp spot on the carpet. Called a plumber to seal hole.

quote:

Assuming it is cracks…is there something I can buy at Home Depot to fill them?

There are a lot of different fillers. Here's what I've bought in the past.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Sakre...ncrete-Patch/3093937

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
No Dog.

I’ll pull the carpet back this afternoon.

We’ve not had very much rain recently, not sure why it would be coming up now.

Do you have municipal water supply? Could be, as Q suggested, a broken water main. It's unlikely to be your plumbing. Not under a basement floor.

Has there been any local changes in the landscape, "recently?" E.g.: New development, neighbor elevating their property to solve a standing water problem, etc.?

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
Assuming it is cracks…is there something I can buy at Home Depot to fill them?

I researched this fairly extensively when I discovered the crack in the first photo below. IMO: No.

The original owner of our home tried to fix basement wall cracks on his own. From the looks of it, several times:



Obviously: He failed.

Here's the same crack, remediated by professionals:



That gray material you see in the second photo is indeed Bondo, just like one of the things the original owner tried, but its only purpose was to keep the stuff that really did the job from flowing out of the crack to the inside as it was being injected and as it expanded.

The stuff that really did the job was an injected epoxy that would expand to up to ten times its original volume. That's the yellow stuff you see in the second photo. (Some of it did escape.) The staples are to stabilize the crack. (They're epoxied in place.)

That repair has a lifetime warranty.

The other way such things are remediated is by digging a trench along the wall to capture the water before it goes where you don't want, and pump it back outside. Much like external drain tiles and a sump well/pump.

QUOTE:
Do you have municipal water supply? Could be, as Q suggested, a broken water main. It's unlikely to be your plumbing. Not under a basement floor. Has there been any local changes in the landscape, "recently?" E.g.: New development, neighbor elevating their property to solve a standing water problem, etc.?

—————

No to all of the above,’s carpet has been here for five years and I’ve lived in the house for nearly 20. This is never been an issue until this week and to the best of my knowledge nothing in the neighborhood has changed.

Are there any pipes in the wall the wet spot is next to?
If so, that’s where you start cutting into the wall.

But leaks are weird, I had a wet spot in a ceiling once, I found it was under the shower upstairs…I cut into a wall thru a cabinet in another room and found the shower was leaking because the escutcheon in the show wasn’t sealed. It only did it when the big kid took long showers…enough water got splashed against the handle to run into and down the wall…

But first thing is to pull the carpet up. You can rent a “kicker” the tool used to stretch the rug, after you are done to put it back. Super easy.

Water/moisture could be seeping UP from below the concrete itself.

When we had these insane flooding rains twice now in the past two years, like 6-9 inches of rain in ONE DAY, I noticed water seeping up from the concrete floor in the basement. I think it's called hydrostatic pressure?

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I think it's called hydrostatic pressure?

Yup. And it can be very powerful. That's why DIY fixes like our home's original owner tried usually don't work.

I don't know how they build houses where you live, but here where I live most houses are on a poured concrete slab, and underneath the concrete slab are the water lines and HVAC supply ducting. There are no basements around here.

I've had 2 slab leaks, one about 6 years ago, the other about a month ago. The soil underneath got saturated and then the water came up through the concrete into the house. The 1st one, the plumber had to jackhammer up part of the concrete slab to find and repair the leak. It was in a copper pipe. Oh joy, that was expensive to fix, then go back and fix the floor and floor covering, etc. The one last month the plumber was able to run a pex line through the attic to bypass that circuit of the water leak.

Try this first: make sure that everything water is turned off. No dish or clothes water, no toilet running, no sprinklers on. Then go to the water meter and look to see if there is any movement on the gauge/counter.

If there is any movement there at all, you've got a water leak. Hopefully that is not your issue.

Good luck to you.
.

If you have a crack you can use an epoxy crack repair kit. Do not use a Urethane based kit as they are the usual DIY kits that don't work well. I found a kit on Grainger years ago. It worked as well as the pros use because it's the same stuff.

I found this on Amazon, looks to be the same stuff...
https://www.amazon.com/LCR-558...IPU0MFE%2CB071Y7NRYJ

Basically you seal place the tubes over the holes and cover the entire crack with epoxy that seals the crack and holds the plastic tubes in place. Then you use a caulking gun to squirt the second epoxy into the tubes. Because the crack is sealed on the outside it forces the epoxy into the crack. You do this to every tube until the liquid starts coming out the next tube, then move to that tube and so on.

I only used it on walls but it should work for floors also.

I've no idea where "Belly of the Beast" is, but your frost line would have to be quite low to have an effect all the way down to your basement floor.

E.g.: The average frost line for most of Michigan is 42 inches--less than four feet.

In any event: You need to find out where the water's coming from and mitigate it. Excess moisture can eventually result in black mold. Not good. (You can see some in the first of my two photos.)

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I've no idea where "Belly of the Beast" is, but your frost line would have to be quite low to have an effect all the way down to your basement floor.

E.g.: The average frost line for most of Michigan is 42 inches--less than four feet.

In any event: You need to find out where the water's coming from and mitigate it. Excess moisture can eventually result in black mold. Not good. (You can see some in the first of my two photos.)

Minnesota.

My house was built on a bit of a hill so the basement itself is at ground level.