Life decided to teach me a lesson yesterday. I've lived in my current house for 19 years and in general, it's been a pretty good house. It was built by a first time builder and there were a few mistakes that he made, but in general, they've been easy to correct. One of the mistakes that he made was that he didn't make sure that his foundation subcontractor had compacted the soil around the house sufficiently and he didn't take the time to put water onto it to get it settled. Given that it was the first brand new house that I moved into, didn't realize that I needed to do it. After six months of living there, we saw that our gas meter was tilting precipitously (thank god for flex couplings). I noticed that there was some settlement around the foundation at that time and had the gas company reset the meter. Over the course of 20 years, that dirt around the foundation continued to settle until it finally reached the point where water would stand next to the foundation when it rained. Last fall, it all came to a head and water started leaking dramatically into my basement office. I saw that there was a hairline crack in the wall and figured that was the likely source of the infiltration.
When the weather got nice again this year, I brought in about 3 tons of dirt and placed it around the perimeter where the drainage problem was at. I sealed the crack as best as I could without digging to the bottom of my 8' foundation. I monitored the basement for water and it appeared that everything was fine. We had some pretty decent rain a couple weeks ago and when I checked, unfortunately, the problem had reappeared. It wasn't as bad, but the base plate of the exterior wall was damp again. I decided that given the previous problems, it was time to have a professional foundation repair company come in to evaluate the situation. The "expert" looks at the wall, the grading, the crack and announces that hydrostatic pressure had caused the crack in the wall and we needed to have him install his foundation drain system in our home at a cost between $5,200 and $23,000 depending on how far I wanted to go.
In the process of his evaluation, he opened up the small door that conceals the water shut off valve to the house. I said, "you won't see anything, there hasn't been water there any time that I've checked. His response? "Well, there's water there now!". I look, and sure enough, the batting on the insulation is wet. It turns out that the water showing up at the base of the wall had nothing to do with exterior drainage issues but from a very small pinhole leak in my water line coming into the house.
The moral of the story is that we tend to go through life looking at things through the filter of our own beliefs and take any evidence that we see as proof of those beliefs. The technical term for that habit is "confirmation bias". I saw water in my basement and interpreted the problem as the reappearance of my exterior drainage problem. The "expert" that I brought in wanted to believe that I needed to buy his product and he ignored the water leak evidence and proclaimed that I still needed to buy his system.
I don't want this to devolve into arguments about vaccines and Wuhan or other stuff. We all have our beliefs and theories and it's well established that we are never going to find common ground amongst all of us. My only point on this is that as you move on with your life, make sure that you don't automatically take every piece of evidence as proof that your beliefs and theories are correct. It could be something else all together. Every time we hear any new piece of information, we can't help but allow confirmation bias influence how we interpret that information. Just because an "expert" makes a claim, it doesn't mean that he's even dealing with the right problem.
I think we've beaten the COVID, Wuhan and vaccine stuff to death and again, I'm not trying to start another conversation on that. I'm just saying that each of us needs to be mindful of how our own beliefs and biases warp our views and that we should try to be as open minded as possible.
When the weather got nice again this year, I brought in about 3 tons of dirt and placed it around the perimeter where the drainage problem was at. I sealed the crack as best as I could without digging to the bottom of my 8' foundation. I monitored the basement for water and it appeared that everything was fine. We had some pretty decent rain a couple weeks ago and when I checked, unfortunately, the problem had reappeared. It wasn't as bad, but the base plate of the exterior wall was damp again. I decided that given the previous problems, it was time to have a professional foundation repair company come in to evaluate the situation. The "expert" looks at the wall, the grading, the crack and announces that hydrostatic pressure had caused the crack in the wall and we needed to have him install his foundation drain system in our home at a cost between $5,200 and $23,000 depending on how far I wanted to go.
In the process of his evaluation, he opened up the small door that conceals the water shut off valve to the house. I said, "you won't see anything, there hasn't been water there any time that I've checked. His response? "Well, there's water there now!". I look, and sure enough, the batting on the insulation is wet. It turns out that the water showing up at the base of the wall had nothing to do with exterior drainage issues but from a very small pinhole leak in my water line coming into the house.
The moral of the story is that we tend to go through life looking at things through the filter of our own beliefs and take any evidence that we see as proof of those beliefs. The technical term for that habit is "confirmation bias". I saw water in my basement and interpreted the problem as the reappearance of my exterior drainage problem. The "expert" that I brought in wanted to believe that I needed to buy his product and he ignored the water leak evidence and proclaimed that I still needed to buy his system.
I don't want this to devolve into arguments about vaccines and Wuhan or other stuff. We all have our beliefs and theories and it's well established that we are never going to find common ground amongst all of us. My only point on this is that as you move on with your life, make sure that you don't automatically take every piece of evidence as proof that your beliefs and theories are correct. It could be something else all together. Every time we hear any new piece of information, we can't help but allow confirmation bias influence how we interpret that information. Just because an "expert" makes a claim, it doesn't mean that he's even dealing with the right problem.
I think we've beaten the COVID, Wuhan and vaccine stuff to death and again, I'm not trying to start another conversation on that. I'm just saying that each of us needs to be mindful of how our own beliefs and biases warp our views and that we should try to be as open minded as possible.