Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 July 31

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 31

river water level reaching basement floor

We have a home on the river, this year the water table was very high and the water seep through the floor in the basement. How can I prevent this from happening again. I have no weeping system around the house, or any sump pump. What is the solution to my problem. The water table was very high water seep through the basement floor. the house exterior is sand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.95.242.8 (talk) 00:46, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The solution is to install a sump pump. That you don't have one doesn't mean you don't need one. --Jayron32 01:08, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Perhaps the OP was considering sealing the basement so the water can't get it. This won't work. The pressure exerted by that amount of water is enormous, and it will find it's way in. (I suppose you could make a waterproof basement, but it would basically look like a boat hull, and the house might float upwards when the water level was high.)

Also, in addition to the sump pump, you need a way to keep anything that will be damaged by water up off the floor. Some type of raised flooring should get the job done, but that's expensive. The cheap solution is to get a bunch of scrap 2x4's (warped ones, etc.) from a local lumber yard and use those as rails to keep all your boxes, etc., off the floor. However, be sure to place them so you don't impeded the flow of water to the sump pump. StuRat (talk) 03:50, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Depending on the construction of the basement (pier footings / strip footings / slab footing), even a pump may be damaging to the structure of the building. Even 10cm / 4" of water in the basement adds an "anchor" of a few tons to the stability of the building. Lacking this additional mass / weight the entire box (assuming it is somewhat "watertight") will tilt or "pop up". Assuming that the substrate is sand (which implies a slab footing) this may not be a trivial problem. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:58, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that problem would occur only in houses of a modern light construction (my house weighs many hundreds of tons), but I agree that in a few circumstances it might be better just to allow the basement to flood, or to install the pump outside the house. A modern approach to building houses on flood planes is to design the house to float above the flood (and to re-settle without tilting). Dbfirs 18:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

On waterproof basements, an unlikely solution is a floating basement - found in some parts of the Netherlands, such as the one in Edam. Warofdreams talk 18:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Chat services

can anyone tell if chat sites like loverroulette are free or not because it is displayed every where as free but actually hides the messages you send and receive. is it depends on geographical locations(country).anyone with an answer please do reply182.18.179.2 (talk) 18:34, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

You could check websites' reputation with tools such as Webutation or Web of Trust   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 07:17, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

It's a fairly safe bet that none of them are truly free. They have to make money to pay for the site somehow. They might try to make money from advertising alone - but that's a tough call unless they're also selling your personal information to the advertisers...which you presumably don't want - or maybe it's a scam of some kind - or they're going to charge you *after* you've invested a lot of time into it before you can get results out. It's probably best to recognize this fact up-front. Then, look for a very obviously non-free site who's fees you can at least figure out up-front. The only place I know that truly is free is Craigslist...it's completely local in geographic scope - but that's not a very nice place to hang out! SteveBaker (talk) 19:47, 1 August 2014 (UTC)