Jello in the basement??

The seller had advised us that she had experienced water issues in one part of the basement. She also advised that she had fixed these problems by regrading and pouring a new concrete patio (sloping away from the house, of course) and waterproofing the stone walls in the problem area in the basement. We took her word. Shame on us.

Every time it rains, regardless of how much, the basement gets wet in this one particular corner. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and suspected an old pipe or cracks in the floor we couldn't see. Well, Sunday I was in the basement, admiring our new washer and dryer, when it started to rain. Figuring I had nothing better to do, I decided to sit and wait and see if I could watch where the water came from. A few minutes went by and nothing. I was about to tell myself this was a silly idea when a heard a faint pop, and with that, water starts running from underneath a wooden shelf in said problem corner! I call for Joe to come downstairs, and with that, I begin to notice there are tiny, nailhead sized holes in the waterproofing, and water is now literally spouting out of these holes! Not a slow trickle, mind you - shooting out of these holes. Think small fountain. I figure this is the best time to try and document the problem and run upstairs to grab a sharpee marker and start noting all of the active holes that are leaking, so when the walls dry, we'll be able to see the problems.

Joe decided to take the idea one step further.

Why just mark the hole, when you can mark the stream of water? With that, he goes upstairs, returns moments later with a box of strawberry jello powder, and starts throwing the powder at the wet walls. Sure enough, we start to have red streaks of water now running down our walls. After using the entire box, we realized what a mess we created, although it's quite obvious where the walls leaked! Now we have a sweet, strawberry smelling basement corner... and are hoping the dogs don't go down and lick up all of our evidence!