Foundation Repair & Waterproofing in Beaverdale, Des Moines

What Foundation and Waterproofing Challenges Affect Beaverdale?

In Beaverdale, the challenge isn't the houses — it's what sits underneath them. The 'Beaverdale Brick' homes built between the 1920s and 1950s are among the most established and sought-after in Des Moines, but they rest on the heavy glacial till of the Des Moines Lobe, and that ground holds water.

Central Iowa's water table sits high and climbs with every wet spring and snowmelt. Pressed against an original block basement wall, saturated clay-rich till pushes sideways — a steady lateral load the old mortar joints were never built to take. Over the decades that shows up the way Beaverdale owners know it: block walls bowing inward, mortar that has failed, and seepage through walls that were never fitted with modern interior drainage. It is slow, quiet damage, and on a prized historic home it draws value out a little at a time.

JLB takes the wall and the water as one job. We brace or anchor bowed block back toward plumb, seal and rebuild the joints that have given out, and install interior drain tile with a sump so groundwater is captured and pumped away rather than resting against the foundation.

On the Des Moines Lobe, keeping a Beaverdale basement dry is as much about managing that high water table as it is about the wall itself. Fix one and ignore the other and the pressure simply returns the next wet season — which is why we build the drainage to match the ground, not just patch what shows.