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One of my clients called me over to repair some dry wall and try to fix a leak in a basement apartment that has been plaguing the home owner for years. The senario is as follows:
The apartment is located below the slab of the garage. From what I’ve looked at and was told, the original contractor had a block wall built next to the original house foundation to act as support for the garage floor. The other three walls are also block on poured footing. To span the walls and create a place to park the car he had three slabs poured with wire reinforcement and craned them into place, then filled the joints to give a homogeneous look. Under the slabs are 2X 6’s 16″ oc and between is foil backed insulation and vapour barrier.
When the car is in the garage during the winter, water from melted snow and road salt makes its way down through the slab soaking the joists and insulation eventually through the vapour barrier and into the dry wall on the ceiling.
Anyone have any ideas to stop the water? I will have to open up the ceiling and remove the insulation and let things dry out for a few weeks anyway and may have to get a dehumidifier in. The joists are probably some what rotted and may need to be changed.
I could get a foundation guy in to fill the gaps with that high pressure injection water proofing?, spray on foundation sealer? membrane?
The head room is right at code level so a drain would be difficult.
scratching my head…………..
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When you open the ceiling my guess is you will see where the leaks originate and a further guess says they are right at the two long joints created by the three slabs. It's also possible the perimeter of the room is suspect, too.
Clean out the failed grouting from above and you'll probably find a trench between each slab. Get some flexible backer rod, jam it into the trench and fill with flexible sealant, but only as deep as the crack is wide. The rod keeps the sealant from disappearing to the floor below. If this were a roadway you could use a bituminus product, such as used to fill cracks in asphalt, but I think a polyurethane caulking product would work just fine.
Here's a poduct you could use:
http://www.epoxysystems.com/913.htm
Wait for other recommendations.
*Brent,Ditto on Ralph's suggestion. We've used Sika 2CSL which is a 2-part polyurethane self-leveling calk. It is available in tinted colors also.One of the important things to remember about calking is that you want to have a 2-point contact between the calk and the jobsite material, not a 3-point contact. In other words we use the backing rod to limit the ability of the calk to reach the bottom of the joint, effectively prohibiting a 3-point contact calking job. We are looking to bridge the gap with 1/4-3/8" of material, not fill it up completely. I read an article last year that the reason for so many calking failures is that people feel that they have to fill the gap up completely with calk; whereas, the most successful results were obtained with 2-point bridges.You can make a simple depth gauge for the backer rod with a dowel and a small block of 1x2. The dowel should have a small enough diameter to fit in the joint. I just drilled the appropriate dowel-sized hole in the 1x2, glued it so that the correct amount of dowel protruded underneath the 1x2 and then used it to tamp down the backer rod. With the 1x2 riding on top of the concrete and the preset dowel length beneath tamping the backer rod to the correct depth the last job of 180' went a lot better than I anticipated. Don't get me wrong, it's not exactly fun, but it made it quicker and less painful.Good luck,Cliff.
*Cliff, what is the smallest quantity you can get in your product? Tremco makes a similar product, but gallon sizes are the smallest mixable amounts they make. Way to much for a 30 to 50 feet of repair work I need to complete at one of our facilities.Your instructions on proper installation of caulking is exactly the same as I recieved at a Tremco class.Dave
*Dave, 20 ounce sausage tubes for sure, maybe 10.7 caulking tubes. The sausages are caulk wrapped in a heavy foil tube with a slanted pour spout at one end. No gun is needed. Squeeze and pour.
*Thanks Tim.
*Garage slabs bearing on 2X6s ???Doesn't sound too good to me, but it's hard to tell without seeing it. I'd want to stay as far away from that as possible.
*Dave,No help from Sika on that one - it comes in 1.5 gallon containers and costs about $36.40 + tax + shipping from my supplier. I'm too far out in the boonies to warrant a trip into Fort Worth or Dallas for that one item. But then that's not too bad a price. By the way, I ended up tossing out about 25% of what I had to buy, but no complaints. It works great, all things considered.Cliff.
*Have a look at http://www.xypex.com, I've had good luck with it on stucco against wind driven rain.-- J.S.
*Look into the deck coatings by Sonneborne. They are moisture-curing elastomeric membranes, go on at 40 to 60 mils wet per primer and topcoat, and are the kind used in parking garages and elevated concrete deck slabs outside hotel rooms and commercial buildings. Sonneborn sells the sealants used for crack repair before doing the deck coating work. We used these products for doing a garage floor deck (reinforced concrete) that is the ceiling above my heated shop below, in a new home just completed.
That post with reference to Sonneborn coatings in 02. Have you been satisfied with it's performance? We plan on using it in NYC on stucco chimney chases this spring 09.