Hello Everyone,

My wife and I recently bought an 1895 victorian in the Chicago area. All in all, we are in pretty good shape relative to similarly aged homes. However, I have been experiencing an issue with water that is perplexing. Despite several attempts to rectify, I am still stumped, so I was hoping someone could help!

So our basement has an exterior cellar entry way that is accessible from the backyard via bulkhead doors. From the bulkhead doors, there are 4 steps down, and then a sloped poured concrete ramp down to the basement door that is about 12 in lenghth. This entryway has about a 3 ft masonry knee wall on both sides.

Due to additions made to the house, this entry way has crawlspaces on both sides.

When we moved in, I noticed some water in this entryway after heavy rains. Never so much that it ran all the way to the basement, but it shows primarily in the masonry knee walls becoming wet. Only during an extremely heavy rain would any water pool .. and even then only small amounts.

The original bulkhead doors were wood and rotting. I figured all this leakage was blown through the crappy doors. So I had them replaced with steel doors and aluminum cladding was put aound the exterior surround. However, this was not the solution.

I had a trusted contractor come out and he pointed to a gutter downspout that was emptying on fairly level ground near one of the crawlspaces. As the water rose, the earth in the crawlspaces got wet - and he figured it just kept traveling until it hit the knee wall, and spilled over.

This made sense for the one side of the knee wall. However, the crawlspace on the other side was always bone dry.

I installed a long downspout extension to ship water away from that area. Yesterday we had a very, very light rain - more of a mist really - through the late afternoon. When I got home, I again noticed water on both sides of the knee wall... It wasn't pooling, but it was definitely not what I was expecting after such a small amount of moisture.

I checked the crawlspaces again .. the one was bone dry all around. and the other side the earth was wet, but the wetness was still 3 ft from the knee wall.

I have attached a picture... I have more, but it seems the forum only takes one? I just can't seem to figure out how this is coming in.

Also, the patio adjacent to the bulkhead entry is graded correctly. there is a very noticeable downslope away.