When we bought the New House 9 months ago, we were warned by the home inspector that there was some water leakage in the basement. He advised re-grading and if that failed than a B-Dry system. We re-graded that first summer and decided to wait until Spring to see the extent of the problem. Well, at the turn of the thaw we definitely had some water in the basement so when we went to the home and garden show last weekend we signed up with a couple of places to give a free inspection.
The first guy is from a fictitious company called Everdry that has 21 stores in 14 states as the salesman told us half a dozen times. Flatly, he was an ass. Wouldn’t let us get a question in edgewise – a real “stick to the script” kind of guy – and stayed for an hour and a half trying to sell us on the most expensive waterproofing system they had for a total of over $11,0000. I laughed at him. I tried to be polite about my laughter, but omm, ok, maybe it didn’t work.
The second guy from a totally real firm called STAY DRY was awesome. The kind of guy you want to do business with. And even though we have some different values – he’s an ex-marine with a USA flag sweater who has religious symbols on his business card – I totally liked having him around and would pay him hard cash in a heartbeat. Plus he called me ma’am and I thought it was kind of sexy. Whoulda thunk that by the time I got old enough to be called ma’am I’d like it? In any case, his price came in at $5750.
We have, however, decided to take a pass on the whole thing. A friend of mine advised me about a year ago to lower my standards. I forget what I was complaining about. But she’s the type of friend who can say that kind of thing and I will consider it carefully. And in the case of my basement that only gets a little bit wet and only in the Spring, I have decided to lower my standards, relegate some older towels and a tablecloth to mopping up water, buy a good box fan (our current box fan died in the course of doing its basement-drying duty), and lower the humidity threshold on the dehumidfier. Maybe in 5-10 years, or if the water creeps into the living quarters part of the basement and not just the workshop with the concrete floor, we’ll actually need to pay out the cash, but in the meantime, we’re just gonna make do.
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