Down The Drain

Just a note to say Mike saved my family's health and bank account with his decades of experience, knowledge and genuine concern for our welfare.

Our basement had been smelling damp for years, but no sign of water anywhere. It wasn't until water started seeping through the seam where the wall and the floor meet that we understood we had a problem.

In our search for a contractor, we came across Mike from Down The Drain from a mail advertisement and called him up. He didn't get back to us until a few days later which was disappointing but he explained he had been out of town. Regardless, he came by that day and we showed him our problem.

The first thing he noticed was the damp smell and asked if we had children. We found that odd, but he let us know that the smell was a probable sign of mold and could be causing trouble breathing to our family, especially children.

Sure enough, he located a source of mold. Luckily it was the kind of mold that didn't have spores so we were able to wash it away with soap and water and bleach.

He suggested we clean our eavestrough before committing to a digging project to see if the leak stopped and to also make sure we extend the downspout of our eaves away from our house. He also noticed that our yard sloped toward our house and that if we were willing to get dirty and dig a little to make a bit of hill so the slope would go away from our house instead, that it would also help to stop the rain from getting in.

He told us that if we still had leaking trouble after we put in some of own hard work, he would come back and do the waterproofing for us.

What a God Send! He saw we are a young family starting out and he offered ways that might help solve our problem without putting out any money. Something so rare among contractors these days! And the good news is he was right! We cleaned out our eaves, dug up our yard to make it slope away from our house and washed away the mold downstairs ... oh yeah, he also suggested we keep a fan running in the basement to help dry it out and to help reduce the odor. Well, that worked too! Now our house doesn't leak and doesn't smell and we didn't have to put out thousands of dollars. All we did was pay him a consultation fee and he even said that if it turned out we still needed to waterproof the basement that he would deduct his consultation fee from the cost of the waterproofing which we didn't need after all.

We are happy to recommend Mike!