Hello Everyone.

I have a weird basement issue. It leaked around 3-4 times during heavy rain in NYC during the past 3 months but we were unable to figure it out since one of the hot water tank got busted as well. It rained recently (heavy) and I see the leaking coming down from the wall.. It seems like the leaking is coming from between the concrete and the wood piece and outside the wall is the garage but it's 18 to 24 inches below the leak area so I concluded that it's not from outside floor. No cracks were discovered outside aside from the black stain under the gutter in second floor. If I track black stain in the brick wall straight down outside, the leak in the basement is along the same line but inside.

As of now, I am extremely confused. We recently purchased the house and had some basement work done because of water leaked from first floor tub and it rotted a lot of the sheet rocks in the basement bathroom but bathroom is next to the boiler room. As of now, no leak is taking place from the tub and this is the first major leak I have noticed after a heavy rain.

Around 1/2 gall of water accumulated in the boiler room but I want to prevent this from happening.

Can clogged gutter cause water to overflow and run down behind a brick? or is it some other factor.

Any form of help is helpful, since we are still learning to be a home owner.

Thank You

 

It is a very high likelihood an overflowing gutter is causing water problems below. Your downspouts are undersized as well, so increasing the ability for the water to have some where to go in a hurry will require a larger downspout system. Not only that, getting the water away from the foundation is paramount. Either by downspout extensions or grading the landscape, or both. If your gutters are 4", they are also probably due to be upgraded so they won't overflow.

 

Thank you Chandler. As far as the Downspouts, here is the image of it. . It goes into the basement and all the way down through the foundation floor. Its not wet around the entry of the PVC or anything near there. I check the PVC pipe, it looked less wet compare to the front one we have. Also, I pointed out where we noticed the leak. Its right behind that wall, the joint between the brick and the concrete base and its also right under that Black Stain from second floor.

Can water overflow and go behind the brick wall in the second floor? or If the gutter is installed and its overflowed, can it leak through the joints between the gutter and the wall. Since I am extremely new at it, I dont want to just hire anyone and get taken advantage off.

 

Think about this.....your first pictures didn't show it, but that tent item in the last picture is funneling water toward your foundation right where your leak is. I think the brick stains are from a slower amount of water, maybe not directly causing the leak, but surely needs to be addressed by gutters and downspout upgrade. Downspouts can be resized to allow for more water, but will the system take it as you have described. What size elbow is that where it dumps? But the tent???

 

The Elbow is 4 inch. As far as the tent, I'm sorry its an photo off Google before we bought the house and he tent is gone. It's open space there