I have a 3.5 year old 1600sg foot ranch with a full, unfinshing (at this point) basement with 8ft poured walls. I think they are 10in thick, but not positive. The exterior of the basement is waterproofed with Watch Dog plus Armor brand waterproofing.
While getting ready to finish off my basement I began to clean out all the crap I have amassed over the years and found that one of the “normal” cracks in the poured wall would weep a small amount of water when it rained a lot, like a full day of hard rain. It was never enough to run down the wall or make the floor wet, only a spot the size of a baseball. I have footing drain tile, which work very well and a functioning sump pump. There are no other water issues anywhere else in the basement.
Being that the basement walls are warrantied for 10 years by the builder I got the waterproofing company back out here to fix it under warranty. I have a question on how they fixed the crack/leak.
What they did was drill holes in a few places in the crack and then shot in what appears to be some kind of epoxy, that oozed out of the crack over its length. Then they applied a sealer over the entire length of the crack and about 6inches on either side of the crack. The installer advised that this was the perfered method of fixing these kind of cracks/leaks and that the fix is considered permanent.
I have a buddy who had this done on his house (different builder/same waterproof contractor) about 2 years ago and he advised that he has not had any further problems since.
Does anyone have any insight into this method and its lifespan/effectiveness of fixing the problem as opposed to getting the waterproof contractor to the end of the 10 warranty period with out a call back? I am close to getting lumber and rigid insulation up on the walls with this crack being behind one of the finished walls. Any other safegaurds that I should use when it comes to this crack when building my wall in that area?
Thanks in advance/sorry for the long post,
J-
Replies
Welcome jj
Clarification needed on one point.
3.5 year old 1600sg foot ranch and then clean out all the crap I have amassed over the years
How old is it really, or was outer coating added 3.5 years ago?
The fact that the epoxy oozed out of the crack over its length says the job was done pretty well. It is important that the epoxy has similar expansion characteristics to the concrete, which I'll assume it does.
That said, back in the day I worked on Minuteman silos, the material injected was usually simple grout (cement power and water paste) which worked well.
If you live in an earthquake area (click once on your name and a profile screen appears to add this data) then all bets are off. Own house had zero wall leaks for 30 years until we had a 6.9 earthquake, then a couple hairline cracks appeared, plus the concrete porches settling about 1 inch over the next 3 years. Even the Minuteman sites developed some hairline cracks over the years (now close to 45 years for some) and they have more steel in the concrete than 99.9% of H.O. could ever afford.
re: Any other safegaurds that I should use when it comes to this crack when building my wall in that area?
One basement I added had a 4 ft head of water outside the wall in the winter (ground water level 4 ft above the floor, this was on a steep slope, the other end of the house was at ground level) . Used PT sleepers against the wall, then the insulation and finish, also PT sleeper for a wood floor, with wep holes to the floor drain tiles thru the concrete floor right up against the wall.
Thanks for the info and here the clarifications.
House is only 3.5 years old, we are the first/only owners. I should have mentioned that my wife is a pack rat and we have two kids too, so alot of stuff got shoved in the basement. This is also our 3rd house, so we had a boat load of stuff from other places too. I have taken 4 truck loads to the dump and have significantly thinned it out, LOL.
As for earthquakes, we life in S/E lower michigan and we do get them occasionally, but usually not felt. I remember only 2 minor ones that Ihave ever felt in 35years, so I dont think that will be an issue. I think that last one we had about 9years ago was a 2.5-3.0 felt more like a UPS truck rumbling by than a quake.
Thanks,
J-
All of the comments about the epoxy injection sound great.
But if this only happens in heavy rains, I suspect you have runoff issues with the grade or downspouts. That's a whole lot easier to fix. Get on it.
Cool thank Pete, that has been taken care of already, even though there really never seemed to be a problem prior to about a month ago. Thanks for the input, This place is great!
J-