Foundation & Waterproofing in the Heart of Sherman Hill

What Foundation and Waterproofing Challenges Affect Sherman Hill?

Sherman Hill is the oldest neighborhood in Des Moines, and its restored Victorian mansions and brick apartment blocks stand on foundations to match — hand-laid stone and masonry dating to the city's earliest decades, built long before anyone accounted for the water in this ground.

There's a lot of water to account for. Sherman Hill sits near the city's bluffs over a high water table, and the clay-rich glacial till of the Des Moines Lobe holds that moisture against the old masonry relentlessly. Two problems follow: the ancient stone and brick loosen and decay as mortar erodes, and groundwater seeps through porous walls that have no modern barrier between them and the saturated soil.

JLB treats these historic foundations with the care they require. We stabilize and repoint the aging masonry with methods suited to century-and-a-half-old stone, then install a deep-sump interior waterproofing system to pull the high groundwater away before it reaches the wall. Structure and water are addressed as one job, because on this ground each makes the other worse.

Preserving the oldest homes in Des Moines means respecting both the masonry and the water table beneath them. In Sherman Hill we stabilize the stone and drain the ground — keeping restored Victorians standing and their basements dry against the Lobe's persistent moisture.

Restoring a Sherman Hill foundation is sequenced work — control the high groundwater first, then repoint the century-and-a-half-old stone, because fresh mortar on a soaking wall won't hold. We control the water first and rebuild the stone second, so the oldest homes in the city come out of the project both dry and structurally sound rather than patched and still wet.