Stop Water Before It Touches the Wall
Excavation-based foundation waterproofing that seals and drains your basement walls from the outside — the most complete way to keep Rochester's clay-soaked soil from ever reaching your foundation.
Exterior waterproofing treats the problem on the positive side — the side the water pushes from. We excavate along the foundation down to the footing, clean and repair the wall, then rebuild the wall's defenses from scratch:
The result: water that used to sit against your wall now hits a membrane it can't cross and a drain that carries it away. For homes where the original footing drains have clogged with decades of silt and roots — extremely common in older Monroe County neighborhoods — this is a full reset of the drainage your house was supposed to have all along.
Excavating here isn't like excavating in sandy soil down south. Our heavy clay is dense, holds water, and re-compacts poorly, which is why proper gravel backfill and drainage board matter so much — backfilling excavated clay straight against a fresh membrane just recreates the original problem. Frost depth is another local factor: footing drains must sit low enough that freeze–thaw can't heave or crush them. And on Rochester's tight city lots, we plan digs around driveways, property lines, porches, and mature trees before a bucket ever touches soil.
Excavation. Digging to the footing, hauling spoil, staging equipment, backfilling with stone, and regrading is simply more labor and material than trenching inside a basement. That's why exterior work is usually priced per wall or per linear foot and typically runs higher than a full interior system — see our cost guide for local ranges.
Yes, and it's often the smart move. If the back wall takes all the water because of grading or a neighbor's runoff, sealing and draining that one wall solves the real problem at a fraction of full-perimeter cost.
Anything growing directly against the excavation line has to move — that's unavoidable. What we can control is everything else: protecting lawn areas, keeping equipment paths tight, saving plantings that can be saved, and leaving grading better than we found it. If you're planning yard work anyway, pairing it with exterior waterproofing is the most efficient order of operations.
Frozen ground makes excavation difficult and backfill quality suffers, so exterior projects in Rochester generally run spring through late fall. If your basement can't wait for the ground to thaw, an interior system can be installed immediately, in any month.
Modern membranes and drainage board are designed to last for decades once buried — they're protected from sunlight and abrasion underground. The system's real long-term job is keeping the new footing drain flowing, which is exactly why it's bedded in washed stone instead of native clay.
We'll walk your foundation, your grading, and your basement — and give you a written plan with real numbers.