Have you been considering the state of your home’s foundation? Perhaps you have been dealing with standing water in your crawl space or leaking water in your basement. Any cracking in your walls or concrete blocks alone is enough cause for concern!
The more information you have about the waterproofing services available to solve your problems, the more prepared you will be to make a wise choice with little to no compromise on the efficiency of the job. After consulting a specialist to evaluate your situation, the results could come back that you would be best off installing an entire extensive system or simply adding in a single drain. Whichever end of the scale you choose, you will want to be confident knowing that the work being done (and the price tag on it) is justified with good sense.
We turned to John Trusa, managing partner at BARRIER Waterproofing Systems, for a slew of information on all kinds of waterproofing systems, and good sense to boot! With over a decade of experience successfully preventing water from destroying countless foundations all across Middle Tennessee, we asked some questions that shed light on interior waterproofing services.
Right off the bat, he emphasized the fact that your foundation WILL BE affected if it is intruded by moisture.
“There are a lot of people out that will say your foundation doesn’t decay, but it’s not true. If the foundation gets wet, it is going to decay at some point.”
He continued to explain that time after time, he has witnessed homes dealing with the structural consequences. The situation can worsen when the water reaches the foundation’s footer block, causing it to deteriorate until it reaches the point it is about to fall in on itself. Choosing waterproofing services, Trusa says, can help prevent the headaches of the whole process.
“You want to get the water off [the foundation] as quickly as you can, better yet, keep the water from coming into contact with it in the first place. To do that, we would seal it from the outside. Then it will never get wet.”
While Trusa highly recommends Exterior Waterproofing services to create an impenetrable barrier around your foundation, he says that Interior Waterproofing services will also do the job to keep water off your home’s important structures. Simply put, the most effective method is to seal the foundation on the outside, while getting water off the foundation as quickly as you can with an interior system is second best.
An interior system allows water to pass through to the foundation and collect in a series of drains where it is pumped outside the home. Of course, if nothing is done about intruding water, you are going to be left with a deteriorated foundation that will cost a lot of money to fix.
“A lot of waterproofing guys don’t ever mention that they do the work on the outside. Now, we do the inside work as well as the outside work, but I like to have the people informed before they make a decision. All the guys that do this work on the inside know these homeowners have a good possibility of getting foundation issues from letting the water pass through. But they all fix foundations, so they’re cool with it.”
Trusa highlights his take on performing foundation repair services with a disclaimer about how important he finds it to preserve the integrity of doing business, saying “We fix foundations too and I’m cool with it too, but I want to give them a chance to do it the right way.”
When asked about how often homeowners opt for the security of Exterior Waterproofing, he explained that Interior Waterproofing solutions are actually the most commonly chosen and why:
“Price. That is 100% of the reason why so many people don’t do the outside.”
He continued on to highlight the superior benefits of sealing your foundation from the outside, including making your money back “at a future point” when an exposed foundation would otherwise have already required expensive repairs.
“There are other benefits too. You’re keeping the foundation stable by keeping the water out. Water, when it passes by the piers and other structural components in the ground, like footers, will loosen them up. You know, a house moves around a lot when you have water flowing through it.”
A stable home structure is reason enough to invest in an effective and reliable solution, however, unsightly issues that occur inside the home can also be avoided. Cracking drywall and cupping floorboards are telling signs of moisture intrusion on your foundation that can be avoided with Exterior Waterproofing services.
Shifting gears, we asked about homeowners that experience problems with crawl space water and basement leaks after having had some waterproofing measures implemented for their home. One popular method in Tennessee is Dampproofing. This method involves a tar substance being applied to the outer walls of the foundation during a home’s construction. When asked about the increase of complaints about its ineffectiveness, Trusa responded:
“Code in Tennessee is still Dampproofing. So all of these houses we see have the old tar on it. The tar only works for 2-4 years until all the acid in the rain dissolves the solvents in the tar. Then water comes through the blocks like there was never anything placed on there.”
He continued to state that most of the time Exterior Waterproofing services are applied in lieu of any presence of previous Dampproofing done on the home. Furthermore, his caution to homeowners about Positive Drains, another common fix suggested by waterproofing contractors, was this:
“A lot of these guys put these positive drains in where they never work in the first place. They run a pipe out to the yard and bury it, like a dry well. A dry well is a pool of rocks out in the yard that you take a pipe to. But once the dry well is full, the water backs up into the crawl space. It is a ridiculous thought on handling crawl space water. They immediately want to put those positive drains in. Then people decide to just give into the water and let it come in.”
Positive Drains can indeed be an effective solution in situations where water is intruding on your foundation, he explains, but it has to be done right.
“We will have a positive drain installed to take the water out right away so it doesn’t sit on the block for an extended period of time. The point here is, the drain should go underneath the footing at a much lower level. You shouldn’t let water pool up in a crawl space before you give it a way out.”
So just how badly can moisture affect your foundation? There was no doubt from Trusa about answering this question, and again it was emphasized that it is nothing to take lightly.
“You can do positive drains, you can do sump pumps, but somewhere in that low space you need to get that water off of the block, off of the foundation, to keep it solid. As water passes through block, it takes lime and calcium with it. This eventually turns the block back into sand. We have come across foundations where we have been able to grab the block and pulverize it in our hands, there was no strength to it left.”
As dire as this situation may sound, there is still hope! Many companies like BARRIER also specialize in foundation repair, providing services to homes that have simply sat in moisture for far too long that waterproofing won’t cut it. There are various services that can restore the strength of your deteriorated foundation, even from the condition explained above.
Trusa recalls, “We had to pull everything off of the block that we could to corefill and rebar them. Then they were filled with a real strong fluid concrete mix that set and then it was like a new foundation again.”
Even the wettest of foundations can be protected with an expert team from BARRIER Waterproofing Systems. They will evaluate your foundation and the different variables unique to your home to develop a plan that will work. With every day making healthier, happier homes all across Middle Tennessee, you too can count on our quality services.
