The achilles heel of our little old house (as it is with many old houses) is the ever-present challenge of keeping water away from where the building touches the ground. Water infiltration at the foundation–a stacked bluestone foundation in our case–has to do with a confluence of variables all leading (much like water) to the lowest point. A lack of gutters, a high-water table, grade that slopes towards the house, no existing sub-grade water control strategy, and the presence of permeable materials below grade all amounted to rotted sills, failing mortar, mold, and standing water in the cellar for us when we moved in.
So, when we arrived that fateful Spring of 2021–before we touched the peeling paint, repointed the disintegrating mortar, or put glass in the windows–our priority was clear: get water away from the foundation. To do this, two things had to happen: gutters needed to go up and grade needed to go down.
Decades of rain and leaves had built up soil along the up-slope side of the house, and, having done so, created a drainage channel for water to be directed into the corner where the workshop abuts the original old house, rotting everything in its path. Without any building material in its way, water continued to deposit more soil against and into the house, building up the soil level underneath the floor in the crawl space. This moisture-laden soil caused further damage and mold in the structure underneath of the living room and kitchen–so, like I mentioned before, our priority was clear.
I was joined along the way by some trusty and (god bless them) willing friends who helped dig out and lay a new footing drain along the length of the house, then trench it out to into the woods downslope, diverting the groundwater away from the house indefinitely. Then the stone got repointed (thanks Dave!) and waterproofed below grade (thanks Andrea!), we replaced the rotted sill beam (thanks Alejandro!) and ran gutters (thanks Nick! thanks Jared!) and ultimately back filled it all with gravel to make a level platform for…(drum roll please)
The new heat pump system! One of the other pressures to get this job done off-the-bat was that the area behind the workshop was also where I wanted to put the outdoor compressors for the new heat pump system I was racing to get in before the temperatures started to cool…we just made it, and the heat went on in mid-November that year, not a minute too late. The pictures above are the following Spring, when I finally managed to take the plastic that was covering the house off to put up the last few courses of clapboards, as well as lay down some gravel to keep everything looking tidy.
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