Is it common to have a leak at the seam where the floor and wall meet in a newer home? One would think newer construction wouldn’t have problems like that but occasionally, it does. The CrackDaddy explains why and how he fixes it.
Narrator: The topic of today's podcast: My newer home is leaking at the seam where the floor and wall meet. What's happening there? So Adam, is it common having a leak like that in a newer home? You would think newer construction wouldn't have problems like that.
Adam: Yeah. This isn't the most common type of area where we get flooding into a foundation during rain events, but it is not all entirely uncommon either. What happens on a newer home, if you have a home that was built after 1980, let's call it, you're going to fall into some pretty standard foundation building techniques that would be pretty standard across the area. The first thing that people don't advise if they're not really involved in the home building process or haven’t really seen one; that the concrete foundation, that’s typically made of 3 separate components.
The first thing that you'll have and they'll lay down after they've done all the site prep work is they’ll lay down the footing. And we've talked about this in a lot of other areas of the foundation work, but there's a footing, which is typically going to be about a 2 foot wide strip typically anywhere from 1 to 2 feet thick that is going to go around the entire perimeter of the house, and they'll also typically be under the columns that support in the center of the house. Once that is all set, then they pour a foundation wall over the top, and that is typically your 8 foot to 4 foot work. That'll go on top of the footing. The idea of that fully is that it bears the weight and it spreads it out evenly across the soil. And then finally, once the foundation is kind of established, they'll then pour the floor. So you have that 3rd piece of concrete, and then when the floor and the wall meet, that 4 inch floor, 3 inch floor that they pour, basically just rests up against the foundation walls and against the foundation footing.
Every once in a while, a builder will actually tie them in. Put the vast majority of construction around in this area. You're going to have them as a free floating floor that sits on top of the footing. What typically happens is that there's some gap that forms, usually it's very small around the foundation where the floor and the wall meet on the interior. And when you have a flaw, maybe it didn't get vibrated well enough. Maybe there was a flaw or a, some sort of blemish in the concrete footing or the wall that causes a little tiny channel crushing beds underneath the house or gets underneath the floor and wall footing mixture there. We'll actually put it into the space where the floor and the wall meet. So it's not a very uncommon area, but it's not the most common foundation repair that we get into.
Now what can you do about this? Well, if you have a foundation floor wall thing that is leaking, it's really important for us to understand, is it a small area or a large area? Is it multiple areas, or is it just one concentrated area? If you're getting water around the entire perimeter of your floor and wall seam, that’s going to be something that you're going to need to be looking at more of a sump pump type of solution.
In this case, if you have a smaller area, let's say it's 8 feet, 10 feet, 15 feet on one wall, it's important for us to know that because that now puts us into a different area where we can do an injection process. And what we'll do is we'll drill into the foundation very similar to how we drill into the foundation for a wall crack, and we want to actually intersect that joint between the floor, the wall, and the footing that's underneath the floor. So you're not going to actually see that connection because it's going to be below the floor’s layer of concrete there. So we drill into that floor and wall seam area, and we intersect that triple joint between floor, wall and the footing, and we put our mechanical ports in, and then we'll hook up a high pressure electric pump and actually inject the waterproofing closed cell resin. That'll flood that area where that connection point is. It's the same idea as putting a gasket between two pieces of metal to actually create a better seal or like a jar and, where you have a gasket on the jar, glass jar. So this would be something that we would do across that area.
Now the challenge of the floor walls seam is that we typically have to go beyond the area of repair that we need to do for just where the water is coming in. So if you had a 2 foot section, you would want to know beyond that 2 feet to totally encapsulate the area where the water is coming in, and that would provide a full waterproofing area of that. Now this is a typical warrantied service and something that was treated very similar to, like, a wall cracked. And in general, it's a very easy repair. It only gets really challenging if you have extensive water coming in over multiple areas, but the approach would be the same unless you’d be advised to be more of a sump pump. So if you have a floor-wall seam that's leaking, it's important to know how it's leaking and where it's leaking because it really determines for you and for us as the contractor to know how and where we have to approach it, and it'll also depend on how much cost it's going to take. So, if you have questions, make sure you reach out. And we'll be able to help assist and diagnose where the water's coming in with you.
Narrator: Well, thanks, Adam, for explaining why a newer home would be leaking at the scene where the floor and wall meet and what you can do about it.
Narrator: If you have a basement water problem and think you need a crack professional near Hartford, CT, or, if you’d like more information on foundation crack repair and basement waterproofing topics, please visit A1FoundationCrackRepair.com or call Adam at (866) 929-3171. Or you can email Adam at info@a1foundationcrackrepair.com. Thanks for listening and keep that basement dry.