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Don't Go In the Basement
The more I do with this basement-sealing project, the worse it looks. I was telling ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
koogrr last night, "I'm tempted to nail shut the door and pretend I don't have a basement. 'Basement? What basement? I don't have a -- no! Don't open that door!'"
So, the plan was "wait for the basement to dry out completely, then chisel up the loose crumbly existing sealant until I reach the foundation. Lay down fresh new cement over the cracks in the foundation, and call it done." It was a good plan. It was a noble plan. But, alas, it was tragically flawed: it required that I reach the foundation at some point.
If I look at the floor six inches in from the sealed area, it's nice smooth solid concrete. The sealed joint between floor and wall doesn't go all the way along the outer wall: it stops after three or feet, presumably because there's no leaking in that area. And the floor there -- well, it's a bit patch looking, but it's basically hard, firm-looking concrete.
But where it has been sealed ....
I found out there was a big problem with the existing sealant because it started coming up with a wire brush. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a wire brush is not supposed to tear up concrete. It didn't tear up the concrete when I was cleaning the interior wall, anyway. It did a number on the paint, but I figured that was supposed to happen.
Unfortunately, while it sort of came up with the wire brush, it wasn't the most effective way of removing it. I tried using the chisel end of a mini-crowbar we had, with indifferent results. I bought a real chisel and learned that you're supposed to use them in conjunction with a hammer (duh!) and have been since hacking away at the joint between floor and wall with chisel, crowbar, and occasionally a new wire brush and a palette knife.
What I am getting is a scary-looking hole in the floor. That leaks. A lot more.
What I am not getting to is a nice hard concrete foundation. I've found some thick pasty stuff that might be glopped-on paint or plaster, serving as "fill" between ... I don't know what, some kind of masonry. It's like I have nobbly bits of solid rock that I can't chisel up, interspersed with large quantities of stuff that I can only classify as "crap". I've dug down to something brownish which isn't really like dirt, but is much closer to being like dirt than I really want anything that my house is in direct contact with to be.
On top of that, it's raining today.
Yi.
I'm giving up on the part of the plan that called for the basement to stop leaking before I sealed it, since that's obviously not happening. I don't want to give up on the part that says "I clean out all the crap before I lay down new cement." But it's starting to look -- and this is really frightening -- like it's all crap.
Maybe I should call a professional.
Nah. Where's the fun in that?
koogrr last night, "I'm tempted to nail shut the door and pretend I don't have a basement. 'Basement? What basement? I don't have a -- no! Don't open that door!'"So, the plan was "wait for the basement to dry out completely, then chisel up the loose crumbly existing sealant until I reach the foundation. Lay down fresh new cement over the cracks in the foundation, and call it done." It was a good plan. It was a noble plan. But, alas, it was tragically flawed: it required that I reach the foundation at some point.
If I look at the floor six inches in from the sealed area, it's nice smooth solid concrete. The sealed joint between floor and wall doesn't go all the way along the outer wall: it stops after three or feet, presumably because there's no leaking in that area. And the floor there -- well, it's a bit patch looking, but it's basically hard, firm-looking concrete.
But where it has been sealed ....
I found out there was a big problem with the existing sealant because it started coming up with a wire brush. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a wire brush is not supposed to tear up concrete. It didn't tear up the concrete when I was cleaning the interior wall, anyway. It did a number on the paint, but I figured that was supposed to happen.
Unfortunately, while it sort of came up with the wire brush, it wasn't the most effective way of removing it. I tried using the chisel end of a mini-crowbar we had, with indifferent results. I bought a real chisel and learned that you're supposed to use them in conjunction with a hammer (duh!) and have been since hacking away at the joint between floor and wall with chisel, crowbar, and occasionally a new wire brush and a palette knife.
What I am getting is a scary-looking hole in the floor. That leaks. A lot more.
What I am not getting to is a nice hard concrete foundation. I've found some thick pasty stuff that might be glopped-on paint or plaster, serving as "fill" between ... I don't know what, some kind of masonry. It's like I have nobbly bits of solid rock that I can't chisel up, interspersed with large quantities of stuff that I can only classify as "crap". I've dug down to something brownish which isn't really like dirt, but is much closer to being like dirt than I really want anything that my house is in direct contact with to be.
On top of that, it's raining today.
Yi.
I'm giving up on the part of the plan that called for the basement to stop leaking before I sealed it, since that's obviously not happening. I don't want to give up on the part that says "I clean out all the crap before I lay down new cement." But it's starting to look -- and this is really frightening -- like it's all crap.
Maybe I should call a professional.
Nah. Where's the fun in that?
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*runs and hides!*
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... And I suggest you play with me instead. But I'm biased.
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*starts you spinning the other direction*
Whee! :)
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Seriously. Your description of how it mixes is startlingly similar.
Of course, that doesn't mean you're out of the woods yet -- the easier concrete is to shape, the weaker the final product. The extremes are something like a factor of 7 or 10 apart in compressive strength.
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I'll get the exact brands (I've got two different ones now, because Lowe's didn't sell the brand I got at Home Depot, but they sounded identical by use and application) and dig up a link to 'em some time after I get home.
At first, I thought that the people before me had used the same thing, which wasn't heartening. But now that I'm digging at it, I'm betting that I'm peeling through multiple different efforts to address this same problem, some of which were of distinctly substandard materials. (I really don't think pouring waterproof paint into cracks was the way to go, for example, and my bet is that was tried at least once.)
As Level Head pointed out, the good news is that if this was done badly before, that increases the likelihood that doing it well now will solve the problem.
On the other hand ... um ... there's always that "So where IS my REAL foundation in here?" issue. O.o
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Unnerving (10,000 psi compressive strength is not nearly as good as 70,000 psi), but this might be the "ultimate solution" in easy reach.
Of course, such a drastic approach might also be a good time to put in rebars.
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Which, yah, is a form of instant concrete, and yes, even I can tell it's not as good as the professional non-instant kind. :) Drylok Fast Plug is what I used on the interior wall -- hasn't leaked since I put it down, though the cement visibly darkened after this rain, which doesn't seem entirely promising. (On the other hand, I plan to paint over it with waterproof sealant paint, so maybe it'll be all right). Lowe's sold me Quikrete's Hydraulic Water Stop Cement.
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And don't think that "there is no foundation pad here" hasn't occured to me. Koogrr suggested the house might've shifted off the pad. O.O Eep!
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