studioporn

civil engineer finally came out this morning to look at the two places where we have water coming into the basement. sounds like the root problem is that the terra cotta perimeter drain is cracked, clogged, or otherwise inoperable and during heavier rains the water level is coming up higher than the level of the basement. so, no really major surprises in terms of the culprit.

we can either fix this problem externally or internally. externally, they would dig down to the foundation all along the side of the house, remove the old drain, install new PVC piping, pack it in with gravel, fill the ditch back in, grade away from the house, and then dig an equally-long ditch in the backyard to lay the drain runoff. this involves a ton of digging and, since there's no way to get any machinery up to that part of the property, they'd have to do it all with shovels. which translates to a price tag of $13-14k.

the other option is to fix it internally. essentially, they'll dig out a trench along the perimeter wall on the inside, deeper than the current perimeter drain. then they install what's more or less an interior french drain which flows all water into a sump pump, and fill the trench back in with concrete. this costs about $4k and only takes 2-3 days to install.

both solutions have their pros and cons, but given that the external solution costs 3-4 times what the internal one costs, we're inclined to go with the latter. added bonus: they can start work on this next monday.
the sooner they get this resolved, the better, seeing as how i can't start on any studio construction until this problem goes away.