We got a call from a man who was taking care of his elderly father’s home while they got it ready for sale. He told us that his father had been fighting water coming in the basement through tie rods in the walls. These tie-rods are little metal rods that stick out of the foundation or are embedded in the foundation during the construction phase which you can see. They look like little dimples and they have been leaking.
I went to the house to take a look at it and a few other issues. What he had done was he had chiseled out around the tie rod and took a wine bottle cork and shoved it onto the tie-rod. He didn’t just do one, he did it on a whole bunch of them. Needless to say, this didn’t stop the leaking. They wanted this fixed in order to sell the house.
The tie rods began to leak in the first place because they are metal and they start to rust from the wet soil outside and the damp air inside. We have encountered many strange DIY engineering feats over the years regarding tie rods. Most commonly we see people who stick hydraulic cement onto tie rods in the hopes to stop basement water leaks. It doesn’t work.
The proper way to fix a leaking tie rod is to work from the inside. We drill next to the tie-rod, put ports in, and inject a closed cell polymer resin material that encapsulates it and forms a gasket.
For more information on basement waterproofing, contact A1 Foundation Crack Repair.