Do you suffer from a flooded basement or crawl space due to the persistently high groundwater level? You are certainly not the only one, as appears from a call by Omroep Brabant to specialist damp proofing companies. They have been busy for months pumping out and then waterproofing basements.
At Waterschap De Dommel they are not surprised about this. “We are dealing with an extreme situation. It rained extremely heavily, especially in the autumn up to the holidays. We have never measured this much before,” says a spokesperson. “While we are actually in the wet period now. These are the months of January, February and early March. Because it has rained so much before, the sponge is full so that rainwater does not sink into the ground. So it remains standing after every shower.”
And many people who have a basement notice this. That basement now appears not to be watertight. While they have not noticed this before.
The homeowner is responsible for waterproofing his or her basement. If you rent a home, this is a task for the landlord. According to the water board, it is impossible to say when the groundwater will drop and therefore flooded cellars will become dry again. Precisely because we are now in the wet period. According to the water board, it is also impossible to say whether you, as a homeowner, have to take these types of problems into account every year.
“You now see the nuisance everywhere. We have never experienced it this extreme before.”
The Zuiden Dampweeringsbedrijf from Eindhoven is one of the companies that has been working on waterproofing basements for months. On Thursday they will be working in twelve different places in Eindhoven, but also in Tilburg, for example. “You now see the nuisance everywhere. We have never experienced it this extreme before,” says Ronnie Kusters on behalf of the family business, which has been in existence for sixty years this year.
In Eindhoven, he is working on Thursday in the basement under an apartment complex on Mauritsstraat, where groundwater entered through the wall. The solution provided by Ronnie and his colleagues consists of installing a waterproof shell consisting of four layers. Once those layers have been applied, groundwater can no longer enter. Before the layers can be placed on the walls, the basement must first be emptied and then the existing plaster layer must be completely cut away. A huge job.
“The neighborhood app is ringing red hot with the question: who still has a submersible pump?”
According to Kusters, in a monumental building on Parklaan in Eindhoven, the groundwater is still at least a meter high against the cellar wall outside the basement. If you don’t have a concrete basement, you’re screwed with these high water levels, he agrees. And the screw was owner Dries van Hapert. It started with a few wet spots and slowly got worse. When Kusters started the job here, the water was still flowing in.
And Van Hapert is not the only one in the area. According to him, the problem affects many more neighbors. “The houses in the neighborhood here were built between 1900 and 1950 and cellar clinkers were used everywhere. They are baked very hard, but not completely waterproof. So most cellars suffer from leaks due to the heavy rainfall from October onwards. The neighborhood app is available. red hot with the question: who still has a submersible pump?”
If you are also screwed, keep in mind that damage due to rising groundwater is in virtually no case insured. Waterproofing a basement comes with a hefty price tag. According to experts, for a space of two meters by one meter you should easily expect around 2,000 euros.
