Rock it

Drain tiles are for winners. The guys came in and in 5 days they broke up the concrete around the perimeter of the basement and hauled the debris out in buckets.

They dug a trench about 10 inches deep all the way around the interior walls

and then filled the trenches with rocks.

 

 

so now if there's any water sitting in the dirt under the floor it can migrate over into the rock beds. And since the rock trench is 10 inches deep, gravity will pull the water down and away from the floor. Sort of like sitting on top of a dribble glass.

Then they covered the rocks with concrete 

but left an open space about an inch wide to catch any water that could seep in through the walls.

They also put a bunch of pink sponges inside the coving. I wonder if they'll expand into dinosaur shapes? !!!

 

But that's not all...they also poured a new floor in the front (under the front porch),

patched the dirt floor area on the other side of the room

and, finally, they skim coated the crumbly old walls which used to look like this

and now look like this.

They got a lot done in 5 days, these guys work hard. Some times there were 3 or 4 people working but mostly it was just 2 of them, sweating away and making it all happen. Great great job.