Not Quite Noah's Flood Part 1

I've become a bit afraid of wind and water. Strange, since I love to sail. But when it comes to our small homestead, these two forces of nature now seem a bit intimidating.

Over the Christmas holidays, wind tore shingles off our house and sheared off the top part of our furnace chimney stack. Now that spring is approaching and the weather is periodically surging above zero, water has become the new struggle.

I heard on the CBC the other day that the "Greater Toronto Area" has experienced 17 freeze-thaw cycles. I don't know how many such cycles our area has experienced, but since our weather is tempered by both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, I have to think we've had at least that many. I know that the ground is thawing because I can see the evidence over our septic holding tank - it is much soggier there than I have ever noticed. And the sump pumps have been going non-stop. And, most troubling of all, is the water in the basement.

I thought we had a leak in the water softener, because the water in the utility area seemed to be leaking from the softener. "The Culligan Man" came to check it out and couldn't find a problem. But the weather dipped down into the minus tens and no more water appeared, and so it seemed that the problem was another mystery of our strange little house. What that really means is that our basement leaks.
The layout of our basement would be considered strange to a visitor - the 'finished' part (ie the family room) is in the half of the basement that has no windows. The 'unfinished' part (which means that it has lovely concrete walls and floors and even some studs in place but no drywall) is bright and sunny thanks to the 7 windows that face north, east and south. But when the house was built, someone made the unorthodox decision of scattering the utilities around that area so that the furnace, oil tank, water pump, water softener, water heater and sump pump are all in different places and all near windows. This of course makes finishing that part of the basement more challenging. At least this was my first thought.
Now, having witnessed the pockets of water mysteriously appearing in strange places in the basment (which means not necessarily connected to an outer facing wall) I think that once this part of the basement was finished and the previous owners had discovered that the basement leaked. So they ripped out the flooring and drywall (leaving the studs!) and left that half looking as if it had never been finished. Then they sold the place to us.
I've pretty much figured out where the small drips find their way in to the basement, where the water then pools in some other, low-lying area. My brother-in-law, who does home renos, says that there is a new water-proofing system which can be done from the inside - it doesn't prevent the water from getting through the foundation but it does prevent it from getting into the drywall or flooring. It costs a fraction of what an exterior trenching/waterproofing does, and can be retrofitted or exanded, should the need occur.
The 'Culligan Man' assures me that most houses in this area have leaky basements, although that doesn't give me a lot of comfort. I do, however, know that my grandparents' house floods in the basement every spring and 70 years later my grandmother still walks on the boards that bridge the wet spots - her house is not falling down yet. Our leak problem is then just another add-on to the "HOUSE TO DO" list.