Foundation repairs: Revisited !
 

OK folks, we have talked about this in the past. I know I've done some concrete repair work on my foundation and it's held till this year, it has only been 3 or 4 years. The patch work I did along the walls and drylock have held, it's the floor I'm having trouble with .

Yep, the floor. Here's the deal, I have a leak in the floor, right beside a footer that holds up a 6 x 6 wooded beam support. The beam support sits on the footer and it is leaking around it. The floor is not dropping and last time I used the same patching material around the footer, kind of like adding to the footer in size. But it is leaking around the edges now where it use to be sealed well.

Is it possible that the footer is trying to settle and cracking it again. When I repaired it, I roughed up the concrete floor around it to let the new patch material get a better bond. But now it's loose around the edges and it must come up to reapir it again. Plus this time, the concrete floor has a brown rusty look to it , possibly some rust from the metal in the floor.

Does anybody know of a new product that works better than compression cement and drylock . I can repair it again, a band aid for another 3 year hold. I'm looking for something better this time.

Is compression cement the same as hydraulic cement? I've used hydraulic cement in the past with good results. If they're the same then I got nothin'.

http://www.unitex-chemicals.com/cata...c_cement.shtml

Yep, it's the same stuff, some people use different names for it.

I don't want to break any of the floor concrete around it for the fear of the footer beam support. It does appear to be sinking any, so patching it and sealing is my choice. The water is seaping up and making the old cenet I used to crack. So all of that has to come up to get it dry enough topatch again. :grr:

masturbate with mud

Sounds to me like you need a sump pump.

No I don't, it only leaks when we get a large amount of rain. It leaks a little, not alot, just enough to piss me off.:doh!:

how's the drainage/slope around your house? buried downspout drain run off away from foundation?

Have you tried a good quality polyurethane sealant such as Vulkem to caulk the cracks with? Or you could jack your house up and put it on stilts?

These cracks are so damn thin, you can't really see them. If you take a screw driver or a hard object, right along the crack it will peel up or chip.

There is so much drylock on it from years past that it is just seeping thru the finest of cracks, all except the floor part.

You can't make concrete water tight with other concrete based products. You need some silicone, concrete sealant, or even a polyurethane to seal it. Wait until it dries up and pour some polyurethane down the crack. Then when that has dried, put some silicone on top.

4 years ago I dug out the cracks that were obivious, these are very close by them. I'm thinking the others sealed up so well that the old concrete was honeycomb in a few places that with so much drylock over the years it's seeping thru it. Keep in mind the foundation was poured in the 40's with plywood panels and they used any damn thing they could find, rock, big rocks, brick, even rock that looks like sandstone .:eek:

I'm afraid the only way to stop it is to dig into it to see if it was honeycomb when it was poured and chip it away just enough to replace it .

Either that or keep doing the drylock every 2 years...... that gets old.

BTW, can you apply that stuff with a pain gun on the walls, it is rather thick stuff ?

Phil, The walls are very light, I can seal them with drylock, it's the flor part I'm stumped on. Like I said, it has that support beam on that small block of concrete poured as a footer. It's leaking around it, and I'm getting a rusty look to the water in it and the floor concrete looks this way when you chip it up.

If the concrete has been cracked up significantly by all this seepage the only way you're going to be able to permanently fix it is to cut and re-pour the area of your floor. There's really no way to "fix" cracked concrete.

Do you have any way to post a photo of what's going on?

No, the crack I saw 4 years ago, I chipped a small piece of loose concrete out about the size of a golf ball, I sealed it up and around the square footer by making the footer a 4 x 4 block instead of a 2 x 2 block. The water is seaping out around the cement I poured 4 years ago. The concrete on the floor where it it leaking is a rusty color . I'm sure I'm not getting a good seal beacuse of it.

I guess I could pour a new floor on that part of the room, it's a small room that is blocked offand has a small 3' tall concrete wall to the side. This room use to be a storage room for storing coal years ago when a coal furnace was in the house. The size of the room is around 5' x 10' , I'm not sure if it would take much to rough up the floor and repour a new section of good concrete an inch thick. The room closes off, I plan to continue using it as a small storage, but I need it dry.

But like I said

The problem is, concrete doesn't really stick to concrete very well, so I'm not sure how well a 1" overlay would hold up. It may be OK for an interior application though. Concrete also isn't waterproof, so I don't know that will permanently fix it either. You need to eliminate the source of the water to do that.