Locally Owned Foundation Work in Union Park

What Foundation and Waterproofing Challenges Affect Union Park?

The high water table beneath Union Park sets the agenda for its foundations. One of the oldest neighborhoods in Des Moines, its early-20th-century homes and park-side estates sit near the river bluffs on ground where groundwater runs close to the surface.

Their century-old stone and brick foundations feel that water constantly. Porous masonry wicks moisture up out of the saturated clay-rich till, keeping walls perpetually damp, while the same shifting soil settles the aging footings unevenly. The result across Union Park is a familiar pair of problems: walls that are always wet from wicking, and foundations that have slowly dropped and cracked as the ground beneath them moved.

JLB addresses both with drainage and stabilization. We install a deep-sump interior waterproofing system to draw the high groundwater away before it can wick into the masonry, and we stabilize or pier settled sections back toward level. Drying the wall and steadying the footing are done together, since on this ground the moisture and the movement reinforce each other.

Near the bluffs, keeping a Union Park basement dry means engineering for a water table that sits high year-round. We drain it deep and stabilize the old masonry above — so one of the city's oldest neighborhoods keeps its foundations sound and dry.

Restoring a Union Park foundation means drying the wall before rebuilding it — repoint soaking century-old stone and the fresh mortar washes out. We sequence the drainage ahead of the masonry so one of the city's oldest neighborhoods keeps foundations that come out of the work both dry and sound rather than patched and still wet.