Firms swamped with calls

By Alexandra Paul
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

Saturday, July 9, 2005 - WINNIPEGGERS with leaky basements may have to wait until September to get them fixed, the owner of one of the city's biggest foundation repair companies said yesterday.

"This year is as bad or worse than any I've ever seen," said Bill McDuffe, owner of Saber Industries Inc., who has hired an additional eight men this week to help repair cracks in basements.

McDuffe said he would put more men on the payroll if he could find them, but demand has dried up the labour pool in the city.

Everywhere in southern Manitoba, rain that just won't quit has turned ground into mud. As the wet mud expands, it exerts enormous pressure on foundation walls and floors, holding homes in a hard grip that can cause extensive damage.

That's what happened last weekend in Deloraine, where a flash flood hit the southwestern Manitoba town and drenched basements.

One home nearly collapsed when a foundation wall caved in, leaving the house tilting precariously on the three walls left standing.

"When the clay is tight against the (basement) wall, water can't get to the weeping tiles. (Eventually) the pressure will actually crack the walls and it caves them in," said Sturgeon Construction president Todd Ritchot.

"It's called hydrostatic pressure, and it's (because) wet clay will keep expanding when it rains."

After every big rainfall -- like the one last night that dumped another 25 millimetres on the city -- homeowners have been swamping the city's foundation repair companies with calls about leaking basements.

"After the rains, like (yesterday), we'll get 50 calls," said Gerry Bonham, manager of Abalon, who's hired 30 extra people this summer to keep up with calls. "It's a phenomenal year for us."

"We go 7 to 7, 12 hours a day" said Ritchot. "It's getting to the point where we can't service them all."

Lawrence Mak, a homeowner in East St. Paul, said he was called home urgently last week from vacation by frantic housesitters.

When he arrived, Mak said, he saw the wooden foundation on his 2,400-square-foot bungalow had caved in along a five-metre length of the south wall.

Mak said his housesitters told him the wall started moving inch by inch into the basement after heavy rains a week ago Wednesday.

"They were scared as hell. The wall was moving in. It was creaking and groaning and they were running in and out grabbing pieces of furniture (to salvage)," Mak said.

After the movement stopped, the wall was curved in the shape of a deep bow. It came to a stop after it protruded three full feet into his newly finished basement.

"I never expected the ground to do that to me," the shaken homeowner said. "It pushed the wall three feet into my basement. It cracked the two-by-eight-foot treated studs holding the wall."

Saber's McDuffe, who was called to provide an estimate of repair costs, said it could take anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 to fix Mak's home.

"I have to fix it, and I'll have to find the money," Mak said.

In Edmonton, an executive with the Insurance Bureau of Canada said yesterday that homeowners are on the hook for basement seepage and leaks, no matter how devastating the damage.

"Seepage is not an insured peril. If I had a house and I had a big crack in the (foundation) wall, it's not insured," said bureau vice-president Jim Rivait.

In Alberta alone, insured losses related to flood damage totalled $151 million as of this week, Rivait said.

Reports on the damage in southern Manitoba came as a surprise to the insurance executive. "What I'd heard is Manitoba isn't all that hard hit," Rivait said.

Apart from the damage this summer's heavy rains cause to manmade structures, they also delay repairs, backing up jobs and forcing anxious homeowners to wait weeks for help.

"Jobs that are supposed to take a week are taking two or three weeks," McDuffe said. Foundations can't be excavated in the rain. "The mud gets mucky. It gets like soup," McDuffe said.

"You can have all the business in the world, (but it won't help) if you can't get it done. We're telling people to give us a call in the middle of August. We'll get to them in September," he said.

"The reason is, not only is there too much work, but the water table is too high to do that work," McDuffe said.

In Portage la Prairie, homeowners are on hold until December. "The water table is so high, I'm telling people we'll do the jobs in December, January and February," McDuffe said.

In the Koko Platz area of Portage, saturated soil is squeezing in basement walls, and the pressure of the water underneath is lifting up basement floors, McDuffe said.

In one home, water is spurting up from a crack in the basement floor like a fountain.

Elsewhere, Winnipeg structural engineer Bill Brent said one of the strangest sights he's ever seen followed the same heavy rains that shoved in Mak's foundation wall in East St. Paul.

"At first it looked like the Loch Ness monster coming up out of the water," said the engineer of the earth that rose up from the surface of a school playground next door to his home in Ile des Chenes.

The structural engineer said he figured out pretty quickly what was happening -- pressure from an extremely high water table was forcing a buried drain pipe to float above ground.

"Within two days, the entire length (of a drain pipe) popped out of the ground. It must have been... 30 metres long," said Brent. "It was a curious sight."

What causes damage?

1. Clay expands when wet. It grips basement walls so tightly that water can't seep down to be drained away by weeping tiles at the base of foundation walls.

2. Mounting pressure from swelling clay and water also causes walls to crack; some collapse, a phenomenon knows to scientists as hydrostatic pressure.

3. Another form of hydrostatic pressure is caused when rising water tables crack concrete basement floors or shift basement footings.

4. A sure sign of water damage is a horizontal crack along a foundation wall. Repairs require foundation specialists and extensive labour at a cost of roughly $100 a running foot.

Don't get soaked

The Consumers Bureau is offering some tips to help homeowners get their basements, not their wallets, dried out:

* Ask to see a valid seller's licence if approached by a canvasser going door-to-door offering to repair flood or rain damage or selling water-treatment systems.

* If the canvasser does not show a licence, write down the individual's name as well as the name and address of the company and contact the bureau at 945-3800 or toll-free at 1-800-782-0067.

* Get at least three written estimates outlining the work that will be done, materials to be supplied, labour specifications, total cost and cost breakdown, amount of deposit, and start and completion dates for the work.

* Carefully check references before you agree to the job.

* If there is something you don't understand in the contract, don't sign it.

* Hold back 7.5 per cent of the cost for 40 days after the work is done to ensure no liens have been registered against your property by a supplier.

* With home-repair loans, be wary of ads with 1-900 numbers that promise guaranteed loans.

* Consider having a lawyer read through the agreement before you sign it.

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