# Barn gets wet/damp with rain.... how to fix?



## PJisaMom (May 29, 2011)

I have an old, smallish barn built into the side of a hill with poured concrete walls and cement floor in the back in somewhat poor shape, but it works.  I've used the back corner for a sick pen, or stacked hay on a pallet... BUT... this is my first spring using the barn and I'm finding that each time it rains, it's getting wet along that back wall, down at the base.  I have about three weeks before my doe is due to kid, and I really need to use that space for her birthing pen... so... how do I fix this?

I'm not good at figuring out the engineering of water... so any detailed descriptions would be great... 

Can I shore up the outside of the barn walls with anything to divert the water?  What should I use on the inside?  Should I mix up some concrete and slather it around in there? 

I'm willing to do whatever... just need some instructions... 

I feel like I need a wet basement specialist... 

I'm open to suggestions... Thanks!


----------



## patandchickens (May 29, 2011)

I guess my first question would be, are you POSITIVE it is leakage not condensation ("sweating"). Because, being concreted and built into the hill makes it almost inevitable you're going to be getting some sweating this time of year. The earth and concrete of the barn are cool from the winter, and you get warm humid weather moving through and it can literally make it rain in your barn (from the rafters) and a film of water form on walls and floor.

To the extent that's your problem -- and I can almost guarantee that's at least PART of your problem, the question is just whether it's all that's going on or not -- then you have two choices. Either close the barn up entirely on warm humid days, but try to ventilate the bejeebers out of it on less-warm but DRY days this time of year, to get the concrete/earth temperature up as rapidly as possible at times when it's not humid enough to condense anything out. Or try to keep the barn as warm as feasible in winter and then on days like these just open it up wiiiiide and run fans to try to keep the sweating to a tolerable minimum.

Of course it is also possible there is actual groundwater/runoff leakage. If that is the case, it is probably not a new thing so you'd likely see some signs of it being a chronic problem, e.g. calcium deposits on the walls near where the water is coming in, etc. The first thing to check is GUTTERS/DOWNSPOUTS. If gutters have fallen or shifted or leak, or if a downspout has come down or gotten detached or misdirected, all yer roof water may be funneling down at the foundation where it can easily track along the buried wall and pop out thru whatever almost-inevitable cracks and crevices may exist. So, fix (or install) leakproof gutters and make sure they connect firmly to downspouts directing water WELL away from the barn.

In some cases you may also be able to identify a particular overland flow that can be redirected thru careful trenching some ways uphill of the barn. But this is not always the case.

If all else fails, I've seen setups where they've used I guess a concrete saw to cut a channel to collect the water and route it out of the barn, and put up that plastic foundation-wall barrier on the inside wall of the barn (to catch incoming water and direct it down to the channel in the floor). This works better in a barn than in a basement b/c your standards are a lot lower for "works" in a barn LOL. By channel in the floor, I'm talking only maybe 2" deep by 2" wide, if it went thru an animal pen you could probably cover it over with something so it did not clog with manure/bedding.

But hopefully it is not that sort of problem, and can be solved with some of the other measures.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat


----------



## PJisaMom (May 29, 2011)

patandchickens said:
			
		

> I guess my first question would be, are you POSITIVE it is leakage not condensation ("sweating").


Yup... I'm sure.  I cleaned it all out yesterday and removed the hay and other stuff that was there and ran a fan on it all day... it was *almost* dry when the rain came today... and then there's actual water... not standing puddles, per se, as it's not that much, but there's a sheen of water settled into the stones of the concrete... and the dirt that was left there is now wet... again.  The bottom few inches of the wall have a wet concrete look to them, and the rest of the wall looks dry... 

To try to give you a better idea of the set up... the top/loft/upstairs part of the barn is accessible at a level from the driveway (up a few stairs...).  This "front" has the traditional barn roof line... and therefore, no gutters (and this is the wall with the issues)... as you are facing this part of the barn from the driveway, there is a set of what should be about 7 stairs down (also built into the hill) leading to a side door to enter the barn.  The other side looks the same, sans the stairs and the door... So, I'd say about 1/4 - 1/3 of the base of the entire foundation/walls are underground.  

I have noticed to the right of the stairs leading up to the hayloft area, there is a section of the driveway that has begun to wash out... (the driveway is put right up to the edge of the barn).  I'm wondering if filling that in, and building up and sloping the sides UP toward the barn itself would help a bit with that... 

What's NOT helping is that we have clay, clay, and more clay (did I mention clay?).  



> Of course it is also possible there is actual groundwater/runoff leakage. If that is the case, it is probably not a new thing so you'd likely see some signs of it being a chronic problem, e.g. calcium deposits on the walls near where the water is coming in, etc. The first thing to check is GUTTERS/DOWNSPOUTS. If gutters have fallen or shifted or leak, or if a downspout has come down or gotten detached or misdirected, all yer roof water may be funneling down at the foundation where it can easily track along the buried wall and pop out thru whatever almost-inevitable cracks and crevices may exist. So, fix (or install) leakproof gutters and make sure they connect firmly to downspouts directing water WELL away from the barn.


Hmmmmm.... I dunno.  There are no gutters now... I'm wondering if that would be helpful with the sides/in conjunction with building up the sides?  Good point.  

(My husband's the engineer.... I'm the "farmer" and I'm on my own with this one...  )



> If all else fails, I've seen setups where they've used I guess a concrete saw to cut a channel to collect the water and route it out of the barn, and put up that plastic foundation-wall barrier on the inside wall of the barn (to catch incoming water and direct it down to the channel in the floor). This works better in a barn than in a basement b/c your standards are a lot lower for "works" in a barn LOL. By channel in the floor, I'm talking only maybe 2" deep by 2" wide, if it went thru an animal pen you could probably cover it over with something so it did not clog with manure/bedding.
> 
> But hopefully it is not that sort of problem, and can be solved with some of the other measures.
> 
> ...


We *did* have to get creative at our old house and built a "trough" around the inside of the walls in the basement, directing water to a drain...  the mental juices are flowing now... I need some creativity!  

Thanks for your input!  Let me know if you have more thoughts!


----------



## patandchickens (May 30, 2011)

Put on gutters, for sure. There is absolutely no reason you can't do it on a traditional hip-roofed barn. If you live somewhere that gets snow (I'm too lazy to page back to the original post screen to see where you live ) make sure they're attached quite firmly so they don't get taken off by snow sliding off the roof. (e.t.a. - and try to set them LOW, although you may be limited by the depth of the rafter tails or fascia. In a perfect world you would set them so that a straight line projected along the roof tin and straight off the edge of it would *barely* touch the outside edge of the gutters. This way, water dripping straight down goes into the gutters but snow sliding off the roof is more apt to shoot outwards enough to miss the gutters and thus not take them down.)

If there is a washout in the gravel drive right near the stairs, and that is near or level-or-uphill to the area inside the barn where the water seems to be coming from, then for sure I'd do something about it. (Worth doing something about anyhow, b/c once a washout starts on a gravel drive, a big gullywasher storm sitting over you for an hour or two can remove LARGE chunks of driveway, including all the way down to subsoil, which can both be expensive to repair AND sometimes strand your car on the opposite side of the washout from the road )

Try to get a good crown on it so it tips runoff water firmly AWAY from the barn at some distance. If you do it yourself, I'd suggest trying to get a good layer of stonedust tamped in alongside the barn while dampened, before putting regular driveway material on top. If you hire it out, make sure that the guy knows that a) this is right alongside the downstairs of a barn and you don't want the wall damaged but also b) it's apparently letting water in so you want a *thorough* job.

I mean, alternatively you *could* treat it like a wet basement and excavate fully allll around the foundation and prep and waterproof it and put that bumpy plastic barrier or a waterproof membrane on... but, if you've confronted wet basement issues before, you know what sort of price range that will be, and it is "just" a barn   At any rate I certainly wouldn't even begin to contemplate doing anything like that til I had FIRST put in gutters/downspouts and had the driveway repaired/regraded.

Oh, one other thing -- without gutters, roof runoff often pounds a trench into the ground under the dripline. When you install gutters, if you leave that dip/trench there, sometimes it still collects enough overland runoff (from adjacent ground) that the leakage problem can persist. So it is worth checking carefully to see if anything like that has been happening, and fixing it. 

Good luck, have fun,

Pat


----------



## Bossroo (May 30, 2011)

Everything what Pat said.  Also once the concrete dries out completly in late summer/ fall and they are clean of dirt and dust ... you can then apply a waterproofing chemical onto the concrete walls and floor.  ( I used Thomson's Water Seal and sprayed on 3 soaking/ dripping coats one after the other after the prior coat was soaked in  on my barn). Also works for sealing a concrete ( when the concrete is completly set and dry) fish pond and helps to easily clean out any growing algae.  Good luck !


----------



## Margali (May 30, 2011)

It sounds like you need a French drain along the top of the wall and under the area where the driveway is washing out. Also adding timbers or large rocks to downslope side of driveway will slow surface water causing washout.


----------

