Seasonal Basement Maintenance

Basement Foundation Cracking
It is really up to you, but you need to come up with a plan or schedule about checking your foundation. This can be quite difficult because these things generally progress slowly over time and difficult to monitor. My suggestion is to make a deal with your self that you will check all the walls every time you sweep the basement, change the light bulb, or if your laundry room is down in the basement then maybe every time you run out of detergent. Find something that will trigger you to check the foundation walls.

This will maybe take 2 minutes to walk around the room and do a thorough inspection. If you spot small cracks beginning to form, or even with old cracks that existed when you moved in, use a marker or a pencil or a piece of tape to mark its progression. Write out to the side the date of when you made that mark so that you can accurately track the progression. Not all cracking is problematic. Some cracks are just from settling or are otherwise very minor, but they are still important to note.

Basement Condensation
Pay attention to your basement to see how wet it is down there. If it is wetter during rainy periods, it is easy to pinpoint the culprit. However, if your basement feels wetter after each successive rain or if it is showing moisture during times when it hasn't been raining, there might be some other draining problems afoot.

Basement sealing and basement waterproofing are two ways to counteract the moisture in the basement and prevent it from happening further. Click here if you are interested in basement waterproofing.