Thursday, April 2, 2015

Methods Of Exterior Basement Waterproofing

By Iva Cannon


The procedures and technique of preventing leakage of water into the basement of a building or other buildings, involves putting in place inner drainage, sealers, constructing internal walls among other measure. To builders it is advisable that exterior basement waterproofing to be included in the early stages of the construction of a house.

Builders mostly prefer waterproofing measures to be undertaken in the preliminary stages of this construction. These plans involves outlining the exterior perimeter drains, resources to be utilized for waterproofing the walls, excavating channels and confirming the topography of the land is well sloped.

So waterproofing should be considered anytime a structure is erected at ground level and mostly in areas where groundwater has a possibility to build up causing a raise in the water table.

Increased water tables may result to hydrostatic pressure to be impacted on the floors of the basement which may cause the wall to crack, letting water through them. If the situation is not rectified, it can cause structural damage to the building such as decay, mold and other problems resulting from moisture. Hence the goal of waterproofing is to make sure the water does not reach the foundation walls to avoid molding of walls. There are several methods of exterior waterproofing which include;

The soil absorbs water, expands and swells creating hydrostatic pressure around the foundation creating cracks and essentially water is pushed. These water causes wall molds, wall decaying and other issues related to wall wetness.

For homes owners there are several tips to know if water is leaking in to the basement; first the presence of cracked wall is evident enough, walls that are buckling due to the hydrostatic pressure, efflorescence and fungi on the walls. To get rid of these, there are several ways one can go about it.

The selected location should be relatively below the footer. This is to enhance effective flow of drained water without the use of any pumps, and there should be enough terrain to avoid the pipes from storing water around the footer instead of getting it out of particular foundation.

The disadvantage of the method is that the temperature keeps changing making the product very brittle, this causes the tar sprayed to the wall to crack with time and start leaking. Due to the shortcoming of this method, some builders shifted to vinyl sheeting.

The ever changing temperature conditions weakens the tar sprayed on the walls making it breakable. Once these stage is reached, the wall produces cracks which lets water to push through.

The final technique for managing the water leakages is through the use of vinyl sheeting. But it's also faced with the challenge of dampening with time hence creating a water table which forms a good breading environment for fungi and decay. The builders should be committed to getting rid of these problems for its residents through concrete sealers fixing bowing wall and repairing sagging floors.




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