Everything people ask before they call.

A single foundation crack injection typically runs a few hundred dollars. A full interior perimeter drainage system with a sump pump is usually several thousand, depending on linear footage and whether the slab needs to be cut. Exterior excavation and membrane is the most involved and prices by wall length and depth. We give a firm written quote after the on-site assessment, no charge, and no obligation.

Neither is universally better. Exterior work stops water before it touches the foundation and is the more complete fix, but it means excavating, which is expensive and sometimes impossible where decks, driveways, or property lines are in the way. Interior drainage manages water that has already reached the wall and relieves hydrostatic pressure under the slab. For many Nova Scotia homes the right answer is interior drainage plus targeted exterior repair. We will tell you which applies to yours.

Crack injections are usually done in a few hours. An interior perimeter system in an average basement takes two to four days. Exterior excavation depends on wall length and access, typically three to seven days. We give you a schedule before we start.

It protects it. A documented, warrantied waterproofing system removes a major objection during a home inspection, and because our warranty transfers to the new owner it is something your realtor can put in writing. Finishing a basement that still leaks is the expensive mistake, dry it first.

Yes. Interior work (crack injection, weeping tile, sump pumps, crawl spaces) continues year-round because it happens inside a heated space. Exterior excavation is limited by frost, so we schedule it from spring through late fall. Winter is actually a good time to book interior work, because spring melt is when most basements flood and the calendar fills fast.

They are different products for different jobs, and the distinction costs homeowners a great deal of money. Damp-proofing is the thin asphalt-based coating sprayed on most new foundations at construction. It resists soil moisture wicking through concrete, it is thin, brittle, and it cannot bridge a crack or hold back standing water under pressure. Waterproofing is an engineered membrane, applied at real thickness, that remains flexible and forms a continuous barrier capable of holding back water under hydrostatic pressure. Nearly every foundation in Nova Scotia has damp-proofing. Very few have waterproofing.

Only the walls that need it. Water intrusion is often confined to one or two elevations, and we excavate those. It is genuinely invasive on the affected sides (decks, walkways, plantings, and sometimes sections of driveway have to come out and go back), and we tell you exactly what will be disturbed before you sign anything. Where excavation is impossible because of property lines or structures, an interior system is the alternative and we will price that instead.

A properly installed membrane with drainage board and a functioning footing drain is designed to outlast the mortgage. The membrane is not exposed to UV or freeze-thaw once backfilled, and the drainage board protects it mechanically during backfill, which is when most membrane damage actually happens. Our waterproofing carries a transferable lifetime warranty.

Not reliably. Frozen ground is difficult to excavate cleanly, membranes have minimum application temperatures, and backfilling with frozen material means it settles badly when it thaws. We schedule exterior work from spring through late fall. If your basement is actively flooding in February, we can do interior work immediately and book the exterior for spring.

Yes, and it is common. If the assessment shows water is entering only through the uphill wall, that is the wall to treat. Doing all four when one is the problem is money spent for no additional benefit. The written diagnosis tells you which walls are involved and why.

Polyurethane is a flexible, expanding resin. It tolerates moisture, so it can be injected into a crack that is actively leaking, and it stays elastic, which matters because concrete moves seasonally. It is the right choice for a crack whose job is to stop water. Epoxy is rigid and structural. It welds the two sides of the crack back together and restores the wall's original strength, but it needs a relatively dry, clean crack and it will not tolerate future movement. We use polyurethane for water and epoxy for structure, and we tell you which yours needs.

Most are not. Vertical or near-vertical hairline cracks in a poured wall are usually shrinkage cracks from the original curing, and they are a water problem rather than a structural one. What warrants a closer look are horizontal cracks, stair-step cracks in block walls, cracks wider than about 6 mm, cracks where one side has shifted out of plane with the other, and any crack that is visibly growing. Those can indicate soil pressure or footing movement, and they may need concrete stitching or engineering input rather than injection alone.

Those are surface patches. They fill the visible face of the crack but leave the rest of the wall thickness open, so water continues to travel through the concrete and simply finds the edge of the patch. They also cannot move with the wall, so the seasonal expansion and contraction that opened the crack in the first place will break the patch loose. Injection fills the crack from the exterior face inward, which is why it holds.

A typical single crack takes two to three hours start to finish. You can be in the house while we work, and the area is usable the same day.

Yes, and sooner is cheaper. A crack that leaks only during heavy rain or spring melt is still admitting moisture into the concrete continuously, and every freeze-thaw cycle drives it a little wider. The repair cost does not change much with crack size, but the collateral damage does: finished walls, flooring, and stored belongings are what actually make a wet basement expensive.

You rarely see it directly, so it is diagnosed from symptoms. Water appearing at the floor-wall joint after rain, chronic dampness on one elevation, standing water in a window well that drains slowly or not at all, and soil that stays saturated against the foundation days after a storm all point to a footing drain that is no longer moving water. Where there is an accessible cleanout or outlet we can scope the line and confirm it directly.

It depends almost entirely on what it was bedded in. A drain laid in clean washed stone and wrapped in filter fabric can last fifty years or more. The clay or concrete tile used in older Nova Scotia homes, laid directly in native soil with no filter, often silts closed within twenty to thirty years, and roots find it long before that. If your house is pre-1980 and has original drainage, assume it is compromised.

No. The drain sits at the footing, which means at the bottom of the foundation. Reaching it requires excavating to that depth. Products marketed as no-dig drainage replacements do not put a drain where the footing is, and cannot do the job. If excavation is not possible on your property, the correct alternative is an interior perimeter system, which achieves a dry basement by a different route.

Down. Water enters the pipe from the stone bed surrounding it, and holes facing down let the pipe start draining before the water level rises. Perforations facing up mean water has to fill the trench to pipe height before any of it gets into the line. It is a small detail that gets reversed surprisingly often.

Weeping tile is foundation drainage. It sits at the footing and manages groundwater against the foundation. A French drain is landscape drainage: a shallower trench placed to intercept and redirect surface and near-surface water across a yard, away from a low spot or a slope that drains toward the house. They solve different problems, and a wet basement caused by a yard that grades toward the house needs the French drain, not the weeping tile.

Exterior weeping tile is the stronger system in principle because it intercepts water before it reaches the foundation. But it requires excavating the full perimeter to footing depth, which means removing decks, walkways, driveways, gardens, and sometimes working within inches of a property line. On many Nova Scotia lots that is either impossible or several times the cost. Interior weeping tile achieves a permanently dry basement without touching the exterior, and it can be installed in any season. Where both are viable we will price both and explain the trade-off honestly.

No. The channel is cut in the slab, which is a non-structural floor poured on top of the footing. It carries no building load. We excavate beside the footing, never beneath it. Undermining a footing is a genuine risk with unskilled crews, and it is one of the reasons we do not subcontract this work.

Concrete cutting creates dust and noise for the first day. We use containment sheeting and vacuum-assisted cutting to keep it in the work area, and we haul out all spoil and old concrete. Most homeowners stay in the house throughout. You should plan to have the basement itself empty along the perimeter before we arrive.

Occasionally, and much less than you would expect. A sealed basin lid dampens most of the sound, and a quality pump on a properly sized basin runs in short cycles rather than continuously. If the pump is near a bedroom we can specify a quieter unit and add isolation on the discharge line.

That is exactly when you need it most, since storms cause both the flooding and the outage. We strongly recommend a battery backup pump on any interior system. It is a second pump on a deep-cycle battery that takes over automatically and will run for hours without grid power.

It will if surface water is what is causing it. Where the yard slopes toward the house, where a neighbouring property drains onto yours, where downspouts discharge next to the foundation, or where a low spot holds water against the wall after every rain, a French drain removes the source and can dry the basement without touching the foundation at all. It will not help if water is coming up through the floor from a high water table, or in through cracks from saturated deep soil. The assessment establishes which you have, and we would much rather sell you a drain than an unnecessary excavation.

A French drain is a buried perforated pipe in a stone-filled trench. It collects water from the soil around and above it across its full length, which makes it right for saturated ground and diffuse surface runoff. A trench drain, or channel drain, is a surface grate set into hard surfaces (a driveway apron, a garage entry, a walkout landing), and captures water already running across pavement. Many properties need both: a trench drain at the hard surface, a French drain in the soft landscape.

This is the question that decides whether the project works, and it must be answered before any digging. The outlet must be at a lower elevation and must be somewhere the water can legally and reasonably go, to daylight on your own property at a lower grade, into a municipal storm system where a connection is permitted, or into a properly sized drywell. Discharging onto a neighbouring property is a liability issue, and connecting storm water to the sanitary sewer is prohibited under HRM bylaws. Where no gravity outlet exists, an exterior pumped basin is the alternative.

It depends on what it is intercepting. A drain handling surface runoff and shallow saturation typically sits 45 to 60 cm deep. A drain intended to lower a water table around a specific area, or to protect a foundation wall, needs to sit deeper, sometimes near footing depth, at which point it is really foundation drainage rather than yard drainage. Depth is set by the job, not by a standard.

Almost always, and it is the cheapest fix on this entire site. An average Nova Scotia roof sheds thousands of litres in a single significant rainfall, and a downspout discharging 30 cm from the wall puts all of it into the soil directly against your foundation. Extending downspouts a few metres away, onto grade that carries it off, resolves a meaningful share of the wet basements we are called out to look at. We will tell you if that is all yours needs.

Seven to ten years is typical for a quality cast-iron pump, less for a plastic big-box unit and less again in a basement that cycles heavily. Pumps rarely give warning before they fail. If yours is approaching ten years, replacing it on your schedule for a known price is far cheaper than replacing it at 2am during a nor'easter with four inches of water on the floor.

In Nova Scotia, yes. Our flooding events are driven by post-tropical storms and nor'easters, which are also our main cause of extended power outages. A primary pump on grid power is offline for precisely the hours you most need it running. A battery backup is a second pump on its own float switch and deep-cycle battery. It takes over automatically and will typically run through a multi-hour outage. It is the single highest-value add-on in basement waterproofing.

Sizing is about how much water your basin receives and how high and far the pump must push it, not about horsepower on the box. A 1/3 HP pump moving water eight feet up and thirty feet out delivers far less flow than the same pump moving it four feet up. We calculate total dynamic head against the pump's actual performance curve. Oversizing is a real problem too: a pump that empties the basin in two seconds short-cycles and burns out its motor early.

Common causes are a basin that is too small for the inflow, a float set too low, a failed check valve letting discharged water run straight back down into the basin, or a genuinely high water table. The check valve is the one most often overlooked and the cheapest to fix. We can diagnose it in one visit.

No. It is prohibited under most Nova Scotia municipal bylaws including HRM, because storm water in the sanitary system overloads treatment plants and causes sewer backups into other homes. It can also expose you to a fine. Discharge belongs on grade, well away from the foundation, or into a dedicated drywell.

Yes. Cutting an opening in a load-bearing foundation wall is structural work that requires a building permit, engineered drawings for the lintel, and inspections. Excavating a stairwell against the foundation may trigger additional requirements. If the objective is a legal secondary suite, that carries its own set of requirements for ceiling height, egress, fire separation, smoke alarms, and sometimes parking, which vary by municipality. We handle the permitting and design the work to meet the end goal rather than discovering a problem after the concrete is poured.

It will if it is built without proper drainage, and this is the most common failure we are called to fix. A stairwell is an open pit against your foundation with a door at the bottom. Every drop of rain that lands in it, plus anything running off the surrounding grade, collects there. It needs a drain at the base connected to a real discharge (a footing drain, a sump, or daylight), never a pipe that simply ends in the gravel. It also needs the surrounding grade sloped away from the top so surface water does not pour in, and membrane on the retaining walls. Built correctly, it stays dry. Built cheaply, it becomes a swimming pool with your basement door at the bottom.

Most can, but not all. The determining factors are whether there is enough exterior grade drop to reach basement floor level without an unreasonable excavation, whether the wall in question can carry an opening, whether property setbacks allow a stairwell in that location, and whether services are in the way. A flat lot with a deep basement means a very deep stairwell, which is expensive and can be impractical. We assess feasibility before you spend anything on design.

It is one of the highest-return basement projects, because it changes the legal category of the space rather than just improving it. A finished basement without separate egress is a rec room. The same basement with a code-compliant walkout can be a rental suite or an in-law apartment, and in the current Nova Scotia housing market that is a meaningful difference in both income and resale.

In some cases an enlarged egress window is sufficient, and it is considerably cheaper than a full walkout. It can satisfy bedroom egress requirements and brings in daylight, but it does not give you a separate entrance, so it does not make a suite independently accessible. If the goal is a rentable unit, you need the walkout. If the goal is a legal bedroom, an egress window may be all that is required. See [window wells](/services/window-wells).

Venting was standard practice for decades and it is now understood to be backwards in a humid maritime climate. In summer, outside air at 22°C and 85% relative humidity enters the vents and meets crawl space surfaces sitting at 12 to 14°C. The air cools, its relative humidity climbs past saturation, and it condenses on your joists, ductwork, and insulation. You are actively pumping moisture into the space you are trying to dry. Sealing and conditioning the space removes the moisture source instead of feeding it.

Yes, substantially. Warm air rises and escapes through the upper floors, and the replacement air is drawn in from the lowest part of the house. This is the stack effect, and it means a large share of the air you breathe on your main floor entered through the crawl space first. Mould spores, musty odour, and soil gas come up with it. Homeowners who describe a smell they cannot locate are usually smelling their crawl space.

We use a heavy reinforced barrier rather than the thin builder's poly often found in older crawl spaces. Thin poly tears the first time anyone crawls across it and it degrades over time. If the space will be used for storage or accessed for servicing, we specify a heavier grade again. It costs marginally more and it is the component the entire system depends on.

Usually yes, though it varies with the house. A sealed, dry crawl space stops the constant infiltration of cold outside air through the vents and rim joist, and dry air is far cheaper to heat than damp air. Homeowners most often report that the floors above the crawl space are simply no longer cold underfoot.

We address it first. Existing growth is remediated and affected material removed before the barrier goes in, because sealing over active mould leaves the problem in place. Once the moisture source is gone, mould has nothing to grow on: the encapsulation is what keeps it from returning.

Underpinning removes soil beneath the existing footing in sequenced sections and pours new concrete to extend the foundation deeper. It preserves the full floor area but is slower, more involved, and more expensive. Bench footing leaves the existing footing untouched and builds a new concrete ledge, the bench, around the interior perimeter, then lowers only the floor inside that ledge. It is faster and cheaper but the bench takes up perimeter floor space, typically 16 to 24 inches wide. In a large basement the bench is often no real loss. In a narrow one, underpinning may be the only way to get a usable room.

Commonly two to three feet, which is usually the difference between an unusable basement and a legal one. The limit is set by the water table, the soil, and the depth of adjacent services. The engineering assessment establishes what is achievable on your specific property before you commit to anything.

It is safe when it is done as engineered sequential work, and it is genuinely dangerous when it is not. Removing bearing soil from beneath a footing along a continuous length can drop a wall. That is why the work proceeds in alternating short sections with each one poured and cured before its neighbour is opened, and why we do not take this work on without an engineer's design and municipal inspection.

Yes, always. This is structural alteration of your foundation. It requires a building permit, engineered drawings, and inspections at defined stages. If you are converting the result into a secondary suite, that carries its own requirements for egress, fire separation, and ceiling height under the National Building Code as adopted in Nova Scotia. We handle the permitting.

It depends entirely on what the space becomes. As a rec room, it is a comfort and resale improvement. As a legal secondary suite in HRM's rental market, it can carry its own cost over a defined period and permanently change the property's income. We will give you the honest numbers for your situation, including when the answer is that it is not worth it.

Almost always one of three reasons. The well has no drain at all, which was common on older installations. It has a drain that has silted closed or was never connected to anything. Or the surrounding grade slopes toward the well and is actively feeding it surface runoff. The result is the same: the well fills, water rises above the window sill, and it enters through the window frame. A window is not a below-grade waterproofing product, and it will not hold back standing water.

Under the National Building Code as adopted in Nova Scotia, a bedroom requires an openable window meeting minimum unobstructed opening dimensions, and where that window opens into a window well the well must provide enough clearance in front of it for a person to get out. Practically, that means a substantially larger well than a standard light well, with a specified projection from the wall. If the well is deep, a permanently affixed ladder or steps may also be required. We size egress wells to the current requirement and confirm against your municipality before installing.

Generally yes. A clear polycarbonate cover keeps out rain, snow, leaves, and debris while still admitting light, and it stops the well filling with wet leaves that block the drain. On an egress well the cover must be openable from inside without tools or special knowledge: a bolted-down or heavy cover on an egress well defeats the purpose and fails inspection.

Yes, and where a functioning footing drain exists that is the usual and correct outlet. The stone column beneath the well connects down to the footing drain, and water leaves through the same route as everything else. Where the footing drain has failed, connecting a well to it just moves the problem, so we check the drain first: the well is often the visible symptom of a larger drainage failure.

If it is corroded through it is no longer retaining soil, which means the soil is slumping into the well and burying the drain. Steel wells in our climate have a finite life, particularly where road salt is in play. Replacement with a galvanized or composite well, done properly with a stone drainage column and a positive outlet, resolves it permanently.

Injection seals a crack; it does not hold the two sides together. If the crack is still moving (because of soil pressure against the wall, footing settlement, or seasonal cycling), the injected resin will eventually be torn or worked loose and the leak returns. Stitching adds mechanical reinforcement across the crack so the sides cannot separate further. As a rule of thumb, we recommend stitching for cracks wider than about 6 mm, cracks where one face has displaced out of plane with the other, horizontal cracks, and any crack you can demonstrate has grown.

Steel staples are set into cut keyways across the crack and grouted in. They deliver high tensile capacity and are the traditional approach for wide or displaced cracks in thick walls. Carbon fibre straps are surface-bonded with structural epoxy, are far thinner, and are extremely strong in tension while adding almost no thickness: useful where the wall will be finished or where the crack is in a slab that must stay flat. Both work. The choice comes down to crack width, wall thickness, and what the surface needs to look like afterward.

Not on its own. A bowing wall is failing under lateral soil pressure, and stitching a crack in it addresses the symptom while the load causing it remains. Bowing walls need the pressure relieved, usually exterior excavation and drainage, combined with proper lateral reinforcement such as carbon fibre wall straps, steel beams, or wall anchors, all designed by an engineer. If we find a bowing wall during your assessment we will say so and tell you what it actually needs.

Yes, and it is common where a slab has cracked from settlement of the fill beneath it or from shrinkage across a large pour. Stitching restores load transfer across the crack so the two sides move together and do not step apart. Where the void beneath the slab is the real problem, that void has to be addressed first: otherwise the slab has nothing to bear on.

Stone foundations behave differently and need a different approach. They move at the mortar joints rather than cracking through a monolithic section, so stitching individual cracks is usually the wrong tool. Repointing, parging with an appropriate mortar, and exterior drainage are typically what an older Nova Scotia stone foundation needs. We assess these case by case.