We had a groundwater seepage issue with a flooding basement that Dryshield came to fix in May 2017. We required a full interior waterproofing and sump pump installation. I want to lead with the positive because there is some positive here. First of all, our basement has remained dry through a very wet summer and the staff are extremely friendly. We called Dryshield to come at a time when we were very desperate, as our basement was flooding pretty much any time it rained, and they were able to begin promptly. We were told that the work would take one week, and it did take exactly one week. Unfortunately that is where our positive experience with Dryshield ended.
The first issue began while the work was being done. They were not able to get a dumpster in time to begin work on our basement, so they instead just threw all of the materials that had to remove onto our front lawn. Since we did have a finished basement, they needed to take out drywall, insulation etc. etc. We are still to this day finding bits of drywall or the occasional piece of wood in our front lawn, not to mention it was a huge eyesore and an imposition to our neighbours. When they finally did get the dumpster, they left it on our driveway for an additional 2 weeks beyond when the work had ended, until my husband called them and told them they needed to come take it away. We also got a bill for the dumpster (sent under another person’s name) sent to our home after the fact, and I had to track them down to come get it.
The next issue is unfortunately a much bigger one. When they installed the sump pump, they had the water discharge to the side of our house. I’m not sure if they didn’t consider this or whether they did not account for how much water would be discharged into our yard, but we has consistent flooding issues, where the whole side of our house was a swamp as the water had nowhere to drain to. (See pictures below to see exactly how much water). We tried many solutions of our own to deal with it, including digging a trench, getting some downspouts to redirect the water, but the second it rained, it would flood again. My parents had a sump pump put in at our cottage to deal with water issues, and told me that to address this problem, the company they used had put in a grey well since they could foresee that being an issue. I contacted Dryshield to ask them to come back and give us some possible solutions to this problem, and also asked them to install a sump pump back up battery (…which was an additional $1000 on top of the many many thousands we had already paid them). The person who came looked outside and agreed there was a flooding issue. He didn’t seem to have any solutions so I posed the grey well option, and he said he would go back and send us an invoice. A few days later, I received an invoice for an additional $5000. We had already spent in the area of $20,000 on this fix, so in my mind, the problem should have been solved and to charge someone who has already spent such an amount of money to fix a problem they had caused was ridiculous. I contacted them and explained my concerns, and they offered to bring the cost down to $3,800. Again, too much. We had already spent all we had on the initial fix, which we were assured would solve our water problems. They also offered to install a discharge switch for $500. I emailed back to pose my concerns about the cost still being high considering how much we had already spent, and also asked whether they knew if the discharge switch was permitted in our area, since we are constantly being encouraged to pull water out of the storm systems, not add to it. I never heard back, and we are now having to contact other companies and pay more out of pocket to solve this issue. We currently have purchased Mole Pipe to attempt to divert the water further away from the house, however now it’s just flooding out our whole backyard. We are dreading the spring thaw.
I am not trying to complain, and I do understand that there is a cost to everything, however Dryshield’s approach in supporting us with our external water issues that we now have thanks to the sump pump they installed shows that they aren’t interested in continuing to support their client’s needs. We are open to solutions and would even have willingly paid had a reasonable solution been offered and some real flexibility been shown on bringing down the price for us considering what we have already paid. Please just be careful and as A LOT of questions about possible new problems that could be created before having Dryshield complete work on your home, because they seem rather short-sighted in considering these issue themselves.
