That sinking feeling...

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We bought a wreck of a house in Toronto's Beach neighbourhood a decade ago. Five years later an expensive renovation turned it into our dream house, or so we thought. What was visible was pleasing to the eye. But what we couldn't see - the foundations - was ugly, the equivalent of an athlete with bone disease. In truth, the house was in danger of collapse, if not quite then, certainly within a few years.

We knew something was wrong, of course. The basement leaked. Over the years, the trickles turned into rivulets, the rivulets into rivers. During particularly heavy rain storms, my wife and I would attack the incoming tide with water with towels, sponges, squeegees and a Shop-Vac. Then the rains would stop, the basement would dry out and we went back into denial.

Paul Adamson, co-owner of Stonehenge Design & Build, a landscaping company with a foundation-repair division run by his partner Gundars Briedis, jolted us out of denial. He happened to be visiting when the rains came. "You've got a big problem here," he said.A few days later the Stonehenge lads dug an inspection trench to the foot of the house's foundations. What they saw came as no surprise to them: Rotting bricks and mortar, holes ranging from the small to the gaping, roots on the verge of pushing into the basement.

The double-brick foundations, installed in 1919, were at the end of their useful life.

Foundations don't last forever. Paul says two thirds or more of the houses built between 1900 and 1935 in the areas he knows - the Beach, Riverdale, East York - have foundation problems, whether or not the owners realize it. "In some of these houses, we can break through the foundations with our bare hands," he says. "I've seen houses in danger of collapse."

The deterioration rate is accelerating, he says, because of climate change. Years ago Toronto and other southern Canadian cities would typically go through one winter freeze-thaw cycle. Now the crazy weather patterns might produce several. Freezing water expands, damaging the foundation. If a foundation gets hit with three freeze-thaw cycles in a single winter, the damage occurs three times faster.

Some house owners make the mistake of attacking the problem from the inside. They might slap a thick waterproof paint on the interior basement walls or, worse, install a vapour barrier between the foundation and the drywall. Neither allows the foundation to breathe. Stonehenge has ripped down vapour barriers only to be confronted with gruesome amounts of black mould, a potential health hazard.

Surgery had to be performed on our sorry beast of a house. A trench has been dug around the house's perimeter so the foundations can be repaired. It is hard, labour-intensive work and not cheap. Paul says typical repair jobs cost between $15,000 and $35,000 (ours came in near the upper end of this range). But the terminal cases, where the foundations are in danger of crumbling, can cost $100,000 or more.

Foundation-repair companies offer various cures. Stonehenge, which has been repairing basements for a dozen years, typically uses a four- or five-stage process, depending on the severity of the damage.

After the trench is dug, the worst bricks are replaced. A saw with a diamond blade is used to clear out the first half-inch of mortar between the bricks. The joints are filled with new mortar. Step two is the application of a special waterproofing cement over the bricks. The cement is a marvel - it allows moisture to escape, but not enter. Step three is the application of a second waterproofing material, in this case a latex, over the cement layer.

Installing "dimple board" comes next. The board, about half an inch thick, is yet another layer of waterproofing. The fifth, and last, step is a layer of standard, two-inch foam insulation that is designed to take edge off the freeze-thaw cycles. The whole process takes about seven working days, Paul says, though rain can or cold weather will slow things down.

Our trench job was done in two stages, the first two years ago, to spread out the cost. Our basement is now dry. In fact it was one of the few basements on the street to remain dry in the vicious rain storms of the last year. Because it's not perennially damp, it doesn't smell like a cave with corpse inside.

I now agree with Paul. Buying a house without having the foundations inspected is at best risky, at worst moronic. Had I known enough to have had an inspection hole dug before we made the offer, I would never have bought the house. The trouble is, most house inspectors do not offer that service. You would have to hire a foundation-repair company. Some owners might not allow an inspection hole to be dug. If they don't, any suspicions you have about the quality of the foundations might be justified. Remember, the oldest houses are more likely than not to be the victims of a subterranean massacre.

While foundation repair is not cheap, waiting years to get the job done does not make the price go down; we learned that the hard way. The good news, other than having a dry basement, is resale value. When we sell the house at some point down the road, we will ensure an inspection hole is on display to show prospective buyers the glorious, five-layer repair job coddling the basement.