I believe I've mentioned our wet basement before. We are still working on the upper stories but I'm also starting to look at addressing some of the water problems.

A 65-pint dehumidifier is making a dent but is running 24x7 to do it. All of the walls were skim-coated a long time ago with some type of cement. Of course that's now cracked and flaking off the glazed terracotta block walls. I thought my next step would be some judicious replacement of cracked morter with hydraulic plug. (Project-wise I can't do anything about the outside and adding french drains for a while yet)

One long wall has a fairly noticable bow to it. A little more 'helping' to pop the cement skimcoat off - and I discover I don't have cracked morter on the bowed wall - the morter is just plain missing in many areas! [img]/forums/images/icons/ooo.gif[/img] I'm looking at damp dirt coming straight thru from the outside. (This wall has a long upsloap outside - most of the water pressure is coming at this wall.)

I wasn't going to worry too much about the bow before - but now that I see the true condition of the wall it will need to be corrected eventually (and probably sooner than later).

I've not heard too much positive about the long-term reliability of traditional anchors. Doing a little research I've found some companies that apply kevlar/carbor fiber skins to the bowed (convex) side of walls. Since the skin band does not stretch (great tensile strength) - it is supposed to pretty much freeze any additional wall movement. Water control is a separate issue to deal with once the wall is stable. Anyone have any experience with this type of bowed-wall correction - or any other type of stressed-skin corrective action?

Tim