I had a wet basement problem and I got some excellent advice from a very knowledgeable home inspector on how to fix it. He said I had to re-grade the land around the entire house so that water would drain away from the foundation, and that it should be a shallow slope (no more than 1-in-12) and go out for at least ten feet. One dump truck's worth of fill dirt later, a month of manual labor, and a large bag of grass seed, and the problem was solved, and hasn't recurred for 8 years so far.
I had contractors quoting me tens of thousands of dollars to dig up the entire basement to install French drains, put in more sump pumps, seal the concrete walls, and re-drywall everything afterwards, but all of that would've just been expensive band-aids over the real problem, which was that water was falling on the lawn and flowing towards the house instead of away from it. Fortunately I already had good gutters that drained to the street, but if I hadn't, the home inspector definitely would have recommended that too.
I have more money now so if I were to do it again I'd just hire a guy with a bobcat to do the grading instead of doing it all by hand with a wheelbarrow, shovel, and hand tamper. With the right tools it would only take half a day (and cost $1k or less).
I had contractors quoting me tens of thousands of dollars to dig up the entire basement to install French drains, put in more sump pumps, seal the concrete walls, and re-drywall everything afterwards, but all of that would've just been expensive band-aids over the real problem, which was that water was falling on the lawn and flowing towards the house instead of away from it. Fortunately I already had good gutters that drained to the street, but if I hadn't, the home inspector definitely would have recommended that too.
I have more money now so if I were to do it again I'd just hire a guy with a bobcat to do the grading instead of doing it all by hand with a wheelbarrow, shovel, and hand tamper. With the right tools it would only take half a day (and cost $1k or less).