Basement waterproofing at 603 means the Forever Dry System, and it is a specific build rather than a loose description: full-perimeter interior drainage, one half-horsepower sump pump per 120 feet of that drainage, a WhiteCap vapor barrier on the walls, and a dehumidifier. In Andover it runs $3,000 to $30,000, quoted in writing after somebody has been down there.
What a wet basement is actually telling you
Water in a basement is almost never a mystery once you look. It is coming in somewhere, and it is coming in because it has nowhere better to go.
The usual places we find it:
- The floor wall joint. Where the wall meets the slab. This is the single most common entry point and the hardest one to reach once a wall is finished in front of it.
- Cracks in the wall. Sometimes one crack is the whole problem. Sometimes it is a symptom.
- Up through the slab. Water under pressure will find its way through concrete.
- Over the top of the foundation, where grading sends water at the house instead of away from it.
- A sump that cannot keep up, or one that has failed quietly.
Without addressing the issue, water problems never get better, they only get worse. A damp basement in April becomes rot in the sill in a few years.
All four parts, or it is not the system
The four components work together and the guarantee depends on all four being there.
Drainage with no wall barrier still lets water through the wall. A wall barrier with no drainage just moves the puddle somewhere else. A sump with nothing feeding it is a pump sitting in a hole. And without a dehumidifier the air stays damp even when the water is gone.
We will install three of the four when that is genuinely the right call for a budget, and we will tell you plainly that it is not a Forever Dry System and does not carry the lifetime warranty. What we will not do is take a partial install and call it the full thing.
With the complete system we 100% guarantee you stay dry or we come back free of charge, and that warranty is transferable to whoever buys the house after you.
What we do not do
We do not do exterior excavation waterproofing. Digging out the outside of a foundation is a real method and some companies lead with it. We work from the inside.
We say that up front because you should know what you are comparing when you get other quotes. An interior system and an exterior dig are different jobs at different prices with different disruption, and a contractor who does not tell you which one they are quoting is not helping you decide.
Questions we get
Can I just seal the walls from inside?
A coating on the inside face does not stop water arriving behind the wall. It hides it for a season.
Will this fix a musty smell?
Usually, because the dehumidifier is part of the system. If the smell is coming from a crawl space rather than the basement, that is a different job.
Do I need the dehumidifier?
For the full system and its warranty, yes. Drying the floor is not the same as drying the air.
Does the warranty transfer if I sell?
Yes. That is deliberate, and buyers ask about it.
What if only one wall is wet?
Then we may only need to treat one wall. We would rather do that than sell you a perimeter you do not need.
Where the water is getting in, and what it usually takes
| What you see | Usual cause | What normally fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Water along the base of the walls | The floor wall joint | Full perimeter interior drainage |
| A wet patch at one crack | A single failed spot | Injection, if the rest of the basement is dry |
| Damp coming up through the floor | Water under the slab | Drainage plus a pump to take it away |
| Puddles after heavy rain only | Often grading or gutters | Look outside first. Sometimes it is that cheap |
| Pump running constantly | Water arriving faster than it leaves | Check the float and check valve before buying anything |
| Dry floor, damp air, musty smell | Humidity rather than liquid water | Dehumidification sized to the space |
How the job runs
Somebody comes and looks at the basement. All of it, including the corners behind whatever is stored down there, because the corner you cannot see is usually the one that matters.
You get a written scope. Which walls, how much drainage, where the pump goes, whether a dehumidifier is in it. If we think you need less than you were expecting, we will say so.
On install, the perimeter gets opened, the drainage goes in, the pump gets set with its discharge run, and the wall barrier goes on and ties into the drainage so water coming through the wall lands in the system instead of on your floor.
Then the concrete goes back. Most basements are a few days depending on the perimeter length and access.
What Andover’s own records say about water
Andover keeps unusually good records on this, and they are worth reading before you spend money on a basement.
The town has 29 repetitive-loss structures and 108 active flood policies, and those repetitive-loss properties have drawn $5,382,507 in building payments from FEMA across 81 separate losses (Town of Andover Hazard Mitigation Plan, public review draft, September 2024). Repetitive loss means a property flooded, was paid, and flooded again.
The same plan names the places. Residents and town staff identified Shawsheen Village, the River Street bridge, the Fish Brook area, Dascomb Road, Ballardvale and Clark Brook, North Main Street and the Skug River. Shawsheen Village came up repeatedly as the most flood-prone part of town, with the stormwater problem attributed to an undersized culvert running under the neighbourhood.
And on 8 August 2023 Andover took 8.7 inches of rain in two hours. The Shawsheen at the Balmoral Street gauge went from 24.3 feet at 6:15am to 30.6 feet by 12:45pm, past the 29-foot minor flood stage, with flash flooding near the senior center, the high school and Chestnut Street.
The layer under your basement
This is the part that explains a lot of wet Andover basements, and almost nobody tells homeowners about it.
A densic restrictive layer, which is dense basal-till hardpan, is mapped under 27.1 percent of Andover, at representative depths of 41 to 92 centimetres below the surface (USDA NRCS soil survey, Essex County Northern Part, clipped to the Andover town boundary). By series that runs Ridgebury at 46 to 49 centimetres, Paxton 53 to 71, Woodbridge 66 to 81, Montauk 74 to 92.
Hardpan does not let water through. Water moving down through the soil reaches it and turns sideways instead, and it keeps going until something interrupts it. A foundation wall is exactly that kind of interruption.
The rest of the ground splits close to evenly between thin till at 41.1 percent and coarse glacial stratified deposits at 41.0 percent (USGS Surficial Materials of Massachusetts, SIM 3402). Where NRCS rates drainage, 22.6 percent is poorly or very poorly drained.
All of that is town-scale. It is where we start, not a reading of your lot, and the inspection is free.
What our customers say
603 Basement Solutions were professional ,honest and extremely efficient. The work crew never stopped. I couldn’t believe how hard they worked. They were very organized, thoughtful and great communicator’s! If you need your basement waterproofing go with 603 Basement Solutions. I highly recommend them.
Jay Ferreira, Google review, 5 stars
That is one of more than 240 Google reviews. We would rather you read them than take our word for anything on this page.
Related pages for Andover
- Basement waterproofing in Andover
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Book a free inspection in Andover
Somebody comes out, looks at the actual space, and tells you straight what it needs and what it does not. You get a written number for a defined scope. No two hour pitch, because we would rather be at the next house.
If you are looking for a team that isn’t going to treat you like another number, we would be happy to give you an estimate free of charge. We don’t cut corners. We stand behind our work. We care.
Call 603-610-1770 or book your free inspection. We cover Andover and the surrounding towns from our shop in East Kingston, New Hampshire.
Common questions about basement waterproofing
- Why does condensation collect at ground level on my basement walls, and how do I stop it?
- Why does it take so long for our sump pump to turn on when we get heavy rain?
- Can I put topsoil sloped up right next to a house’s
- Can you use Flex Seal on basement walls?
- Do I need to waterproof my basement prior to having it finished?
- Does efflorescence mean the basement leaks?
- Does my retaining wall need weep holes OR a perforated
- Does waterproofing basement add value?
- How can homeowners prevent basement moisture problems before they start?
- How can I stop water from seeping in through the floor of my basement?
- How can you waterproof a basement wall effectively without hiring a professional?
- How can you waterproof an outside wall without painting it?
More 603 services in Andover
- Basement Finishing in Andover, MA
- Crawl Space Encapsulation in Andover, MA
- Foundation Crack Repair in Andover, MA
- Radon Mitigation in Andover, MA
