The Water in Your Basement

I was reading a common sense article over at Get Rich Slowly about why their heating bill was higher than it should have been. A contractor spotted the problem and pointed it out to them. It reminded me of a somewhat similar occurrence that happened to me not that long ago.

Two summers ago, the rental property my wife and I own was collecting water in the basement. We’re “absentee landlords” that live about six hours away from the property. My grandmother manages it and we pay her $50 per month. I think it’s a good deal for everyone involved. When times are good, there’s not much to do other than collect the checks. Of course, when something goes wrong, you need someone on the other end of the phone that you trust to deal with the tenants in a polite and understanding matter. My grandma is great with people. Plus, of course, it’s someone who’s opinion and advice I can trust. When something goes wrong, I trust her assessment of the situation, and I rest easier knowing that things get done the way I end up deciding they should. She does an excellent job, and she’s due for a raise;)

When you have renters with water in the basement of the property they’re trying to live in, obviously you don’t have very happy renters. When I found out about the water in the basement, I followed conventional wisdom and told my grandma to get 3 estimates. The first estimate came back at around $1600 or so, if my memory serves me correctly, and it involved digging a narrow trench in part of the basement and “waterproofing” it, then refilling the narrow trench. My grandma said that the guy stayed no more than ten minutes, gave her the estimate, and left.

Around this same time, I did an internet search for “basement leak home repair” and got lots of hits – many of them alerts to the scams involved in this particular area of home repair. The sites I read online pointed out that water basement “specialists” often have no particular certifications or expertise. It also alerted me to the fact that many of these companies will advertise that they’ve been in business for a long time – 30 years or more in some cases. So I was cognizant of this possibility. At the same time, I wanted the problem with the water in the basement permanently fixed. I had personally applied a sealant to the basement and hadn’t had a problem in quite awhile. Having water in the basement of the place where you’re making your home is a miserable experience, though, and if $1600 would fix it, I was, of course, going to have it fixed.

$1600 was a lot of money to me two summers ago (to be honest, it still is). Having to pay $1600 made me sick to my stomach. Of course, according to the “scam alert” sites, often times the scammers would charge 5-10k for the basement repair. I don’t know this to be the case, but I bet they do it based on what they think you can afford to pay. They want to squeeze you, but not ask for something they can’t reasonably get. I was very conflicted as to what to do. I basically made up my mind that I would make my decision based on how the second estimate came in.

The second estimate came in at around $1900 if I remember correctly. Typically I would assume that both companies have equal competence to do the work, since I don’t really have an objective way of assessing them. Neither were based on recommendations of anyone I knew, which would have been ideal. Neither employed or were connected to anyone I knew. In that situation I would normally just go with the cheaper bid. Complicating things was the fact that my grandma was very impressed with the salesmanship of the man with the $1900 bid. He spent a lot of time with her, explaining why water chooses to gather in a particular area and how they could fix it. She was really taken with the fact that he spent so much time and was nice. She suggested going with them over the other company. I told her I would think about it and call her back.

At this point, I was conflicted about the entire thing. I was upset about having to spend the money and conflicted as to which company to go with. I was working out of town at the time, but wanted to make a decision that day. So I called my wife (who was then my fiancee) and voiced all the things I was thinking and what I was worried about, and how I wasn’t sure if the work legitimately needed to be done, and asking her whether she thought I should drive down and look at it myself. Luckily, my wife came through with a breath of logic – saying, “you always say that you should get three bids…so why not just put off making a decision and get a third bid.” So I called grandma back and asked her to get a third bid.

She called back with the story. The third bid was from a (mostly) retired fellow in his late 60s. He looked around for about 5 minutes, and pointed out that the water was coming in from a small hole in the all near a doorway. He suggested we get some quickcrete to patch it – and suggested that it should only cost about ten bucks and a few minutes to fix. He said he’d do it, but it really wasn’t worth his time. I was elated, and my grandma and I both had a good laugh over the whole situation.

I learned several things about how to approach problems from the water in the basement. For one, crowd source. Use the people you trust to talk about ideas. My wife doesn’t know anything about fixing basements, but she suggested something logical to do. Two, always get that third estimate to make sure it’s falling in to line. Talk to as many pros as you can and compare the information you’re getting. I may not know anything about fixing my basement, but I’m good at comparing information and finding inconsistencies. You can discern a lot of truth from doing that very thing. Three, hire good people that you can trust. Hire your grandma if you can. Whether it’s water in your basement, a heating problem, or any other kind of problem, do some research and approach the problem using a sound, logical approach. Hopefully you’ll find that the problem can be fixed cheaply and easily. Do you have similar stories? Share them by email or in the comments. Thanks for reading.