Foundation Crack Repairs
In the greater Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue area, foundation wall cracks are common. Fixing them to never leak again is not as easy as slapping concrete on the inside wall. Leaking walls can form for a variety of reasons and come from a verity of sources and not all repairs are the same or as reliable.
Wall cracks typically form when there is stress on the concrete foundation wall. Either shifts in the earth that cause the house to move or settle ever so slightly, around the bottom corners of windows, or in drop down foundations built into hill slopes.
Rock pockets (clumps of stone and rock that can run horizontally across a wall) existed when the foundation wall was built, but it was a matter of time before water found a pathway through the rocks the water entered your basement.
When to repair from the outside or inside?
Access! That’s right, it is all about the access to the repair area.
Injection from the inside of the house, pushing a urethane flexible material to the exterior of the home is designed to fill the entire crack and coat itself on the outside of the wall. This is handy and requires NO OUTSIDE digging or removal of landscaping or hardscapes to access the repair area. It is 100% guaranteed to work and because it never lets water even to enter the crack in the first place, there is no loss of the concretes structural integrity. It is both a common and widely used when performed by trained technicians with proper training. Urethane also flexes and move with changes in temperature and small movements of the house.
Outside the house. Some cracks are easier to access and require very little digging. And like the interior injection, coating the wall from the outside repairs prevents water from getting to the wall and to the crack to let water in to the basement. The dirt is removed from the outside repair area, the wall should be cleaned and dried, and then multiple applications of exterior waterproofing foundation emulsion applied by hand, with an additional drain mat covering the coating to help ensure longevity of the material. Water test your workmanship! Then back-fill the native soils.
Question other solutions!
Interior patching with concrete. No matter how hard you try, success will only be temporary. Concrete on concrete patches never bond to one another, and while effective in the short term, it is simply a plug on the inside wall and time and movement of the structure will break the seal and the wall will leak again.
Tube install. Some companies open the crack wider to install a tube or foam matting over the crack, and direct water into an interior drainage system. While it prevents the water from being seen inside the basement, it still allows the water to pass all the way through the wall. The water damages and softens the concrete (concrete is porous and can absorb water), with the potential for future damage to the concrete integrity. It is more work and more damaging to the foundation than is needed.
If you are looking for permanent solutions to pesky wall and foundation leaks, call today for a free no obligation inspection and quote. 800-584-9118