Water leaking in between slab and concrete block

[golden]

This past weekend we had water come into our garage up in northerm Minnesota.  What happened is that we got up to 36 inches of snow a month ago after several weeks of subzero weather prior to the snowfall (the frost went deep into the ground).  This last Sunday morning almost all the snow was gone and then we received about one-half an inch of rain that came down very fast (thunderstorm).  The water came into the garage between the floor slab and the block wall (the interface between the floor slab and the face of the concrete block.  There is good drainage away from the garage accept that on one side the wall had to come up a couple of blocks higher because the ground line would have been higher then the floor slab.  I cut the bank down five feet before you get to that side of the garage and I cut the ground line lower yet parallel to the garage wall so that the water would run parallel to the wall and a couple of feet away (I have about three feet of poly & rock down on that side so that the water cannot run down but will run in the poly until it gets to the driveway and backside of the garage where the water runs away from the garage.

I have not had any problems with water running into the garage and we have had two and three inch rainfalls (falling in a very short period of time )and never had a drop of water come into the garage.

I thought maybe I would need to put drain tile in but this occurred well above the footing.  I don't think that there could have been that much water that it would go down below the footing and then come up on the other side and travel against gravity to leak into the garage floor.  This leak was localized in two areas that were about three feet from each side of one of the corners of the garage.  The other corner I put tar on four courses of the block last summer because I had a little water come in there.  But since I did that I didn't have any problems in that corner.

Do you think I should do the same on the corner where the two leaks are and maybe also add some poly against the tar.

What do you thnk??  I'm looking for some additional suggesting or theories on why this happened.  I only want to do this fix once so I want to be sure I'm not overlooking anything.

Thanks.

Golden

[Rod Johnson]

This seems to be a very specific problem based on your particular circumstances. Hard to troubleshoot this way. Tar on the inside of the wall is not recommended. Try to go with exterior waterproofing (elastomeric) or drainage control and the interior if needed.