You are a good swimmer. Can you float a fleet of boats in your Maine home basement?

Is the thought of water rising up your furnace, and your laundry basket floating around the cellar making you a tad edgy this spring thaw? Where is it coming from?   If you don't have your Senior Lifesaving Red Cross Swimming Certificate and worry about water, do some Hardy Boy adventure work first.  Like a good detective, where is the water coming in from? Around a sewer line or water line opening in the cellar wall? Go around the outside of the home and see what "the lay of the land" is. Is the ground sloped toward the wall where the water is coming in? Landscaping is going to be needed with more soil/grass or crushed rock brought in.  In some cases around a cellar casement window, a galvanized half moon device will allow building up the grade if that window is where the water is streaming or seeping in. Or you may eliminate it and raise the grade around that window opening once it is filled in.

If the water is bubbling up from the floor cracks, that is a bigger problem.  If it is coming in from a wall crack, hydraulic cement make fix it.  The worse case scenario is when you look at the land on all four sides of the home and realize you are in a hole or depression and everytime it rains three days or when frost in northern states leaves the ground from winter, you are the "drain" or low point.  This building site was not a good one and maybe the soils are such that they do not allow "shedding" or drainage of the water.  A pond or many lakes are there because the clay holds the water.  For a home cellar hole, you want gravel or a pourous soil that allows quick drainage and water not to be standing or lingering.  Drainage tiles around the home may not have been installed and a back hoe digging up all around the perimeter may sound drastic but the only real cure if you wanted to put living space in that damp cellar.  While the outside walls are exposed if the concrete variety, brush on a can of the black tar sealant that helps waterproof and weather seal the wall.  Usually it is a series of causes for water.  In Maine, where snow falls this past winter 2007/2008 are a record close to 200 inches, finding a bone dry cellar is going to be harder.  Many folks we deal with in the real estate world have gotten water when they never got water before.  Tell them to check their swimming skills (although not very funny when you worry about the cellar to the point of not taking a trip or running errands). 

If a sub-pump is installed, is it working property and is the line from it to the outside just dumping ground water outside and coming right back in again? Is there a drain and is it open? Was the floor tilted to the drain? You may need to use a push broom / squeegee to push the excess water for those two weeks of spring thaw to the corner.  I have seen brand new homes that get water and even a law suit on one with the owner being assessed $7000 damages from a home owner who hired him to build it. But not to have to have two sub pumps in their basement to handle water every time it rains.  In that case the cellar hole was too deep, soil profile was wrong. Eventually with a high water table in Northern Maine, you can create a "dug well" effect or hit a spring that makes your cellar like a pond.  With mold concerns and worry about the furnace konking out, this anxiety or stress is a real concern and not always easy to fix.