Prepare Your Basement

You don't have to live with cold, damp concrete walls!
ThermalDry® WALL System benefits are fourfold. First, the system reflects 97% of the indoor heat back into the basement. This is important because foundation walls have a lot of thermal mass and are cooled by the earth, as well as by cold weather in winter. Warming those walls with interior heat is nearly impossible. So most of the heat is lost to the outside. Installing ThermalDry® WALL System will make it a lot easier to heat a basement and will save energy. It will pay for itself over time.

Second, the ThermalDry® WALL system contains water leakage by draining it down behind the wall covering to a WaterGuard or DryTrak floor system.

Third, it prevents water vapor from coming into the basement environment, helping to reduce humidity and mold growth.

Fourth, it improves the appearance of the walls if they were bad to begin with. The foil look can be left exposed in an unfinished area or covered when the basement is finished. A half-inch space needs to be left in front of the foil for heat reflection to occur.

Are your basement window wells dark, ugly, wet and debris filled?
The SunHouse^TM basement window enclosure will give you an attractive, bright, clean, solution that keeps rain out, prevents weeds from growing inside, and reflects lots of natural light into your basement!

One major difference between basement space and the upstairs is natural light. The SunHouse^TMhas specially shaped sides, color and sloped bottom to reflect as much light as possible through your basement windows. This makes your basement a brighter, more pleasant place.

SaniDry Dehumidifier for Serious Dehumidification
I own this small, old house that was previously occupied for 48 years by the same family. The basement was really damp this summer - my first summer experience since we bought the place. It had so much condensation, that there was 1/8" of water on the floor, and the walls were dripping. After a month or so of this condition, mold began to grow upstairs on all the wood work. Leather shoes and coats got fuzzy with mold. The kitchen cabinets were coated with a white to greenish fuzz. We could hardly get into the house because the doors were swelled so much you couldn't open them. It was time to do something.

I had procrastinated getting a SaniDry because I knew we needed all we had for customers, and I was waiting until winter when we caught up. I could wait no more. I took one that had been dented in shipping and brought it right over. I plugged it in and ran the hose into a floor drain. What happened next was more than amazing - it was shocking.

After 12 hours, the bottom of the walls and floor dried up. Just overnight. After 48 hours, all the nooks and crannies of the basement - all the building materials - completely dried out. After a few more days the upstairs doors opened normally, and no more mold grew after we wiped it off. I just couldn't believe it.

It was then I truly realized that Basement Systems had one of the most amazing pieces of equipment ever devised to fix basements - and more than that - to fix houses. The benefits of really drying a house from the inside out are countless. And now I knew we could do it.

Fixing groundwater leaks is easy with WaterGuard, SuperSump, wall treatments, etc. We are now moving beyond that into fixing the house by drying the air in it, and the results are dramatic.

A few weeks after this basement was dried, the previous owner of 48 years and his wife dropped by for a visit. I showed them the basement. The next day they called me at the office and wanted a SaniDry for their house.

A Miracle Machine it is!

The author, Larry Janesky, is the president and founder of Basement Systems.