hi everyone,

so we ended up with a flooded basement over the weekend 3 inches of water throughout, its fully finished and wrecked, all flooring gone, dry wall gotta be cut 2 feet up from floor and replaced, plus tons of contents gone, thank god for insurance.

I just have a query regarding insulation for those maybe in the know!. The house is modern, 5 yrs old, the owners didnt appear to scrimp on anything, however on cutting out the dry wall today to start the drying process we have discovered there is no insulation in the external walls in the basement.

We have in floor heat all through the house and it works great warm in winter and the basement stays really cool in the summer, would this be why they chose not to insulate the walls downstairs, ie to keep it cooler in summer, or have they just scrimped on this when building the house?

Would be grateful for any views, we assumed it would be worth paying to get this put in now whilst all the basement is being torn apart, but dont want to loose the coolness the basement provides in the summer

any views would be great, thanks !

They scrimped. My basement's fully finished and insulated throughout. Still the coolest part of the house in the summer.

Shouldn't there be insulation and a vapour barrier? any pics?

there is a vapour barrier just no insulation

I think there definitely needs to be insulation. Are your heating bills high?

+1

Neither of which keep water out if it is water-table issue, nor does insurance cover this.

Burst or leaking pipes another thing though.

What caused the flooding?

we are all oil for in floor heat, not excessive compared to electric, but could be cheaper, thinking of putting in woodstove in basement to try and save $

insurance will cover if you have sewer back up endorsement which fortunately we have, basically it is water table issue but has come back into the house via a drain, for this endorsement on coverage to apply you either have to have the drain hole in floor or a sump pump failure. Only issue is there is a limit on coverage for $ payable versus the standard building coverage, we think the drain that is attached to the house and goes way down the garden has got blocked/frozen, hence the water has backed up and come through the drain hole in the basement

as above

So long as it is not determined as flooding, as there is no flood insurance in Canada, but there is sewer back up and burst pipe.

There needs to be insulation Nikki. Get Andy on to it pronto, or when the walls dry out ...like..


Did your sump pump work at all?

I'd be inclined to agree with the rest Nikki, we have insulated and vapour barriered our basement too.

I wonder if, like you might think, there's a reason behind not doing it if they have spared no expense elsewhere????

Unless they had dodgy contractors but then surely it would have needed inspecting to classify it as a finished basement, and insulating exterior walls must be in some or other code.

I'd ask Mike Holmes.

When you do want to replace it i would look in to spray foam insulation costs more but worth it.

We just did that. iirc the materials were about $300 (it's ony one end of the basement, the rest is finished). The potential grant is $600+ so, if we see the government's money, we'll actually win on it.

Ive got 2"of R10 foam, plus R24 Roxul in the stud walls, even unheated its the coolest part in the summer and warmest in the winter. Best investment Ive made I think.

I guess the advantage of spray foaming is it effectively seals and vapour barriers all the small nooks and crannies, in my case that invilved a lot of stuffing fibreglasss and cutting and taping of 6mil polythene sheeting