Most painters say that concrete floors are the highest risk surface to paint. The reason being is because it will often peel. It's a great idea to paint it because it will look nice. The real question is how long it will last. There are some things to consider when painting concrete floors. The first, is it a new floor? If it is new concrete, you want to give it time to fully cure. The...

What’s the difference between the two? You are considering waterproofing vs dampproofing when you are putting in a new foundation. It is done from the outside. Dampproofing is what you see all the time with either spray or roll-on black material. The intent of dampproofing is to simply stop the moisture in the soil from getting through the concrete. Waterproofing is not only stopping the moisture from the soil from getting through the concrete foundation,...

We went out and looked out a house in Dorchester, MA where a woman had a foundation crack in a poured concrete foundation. You could actually see the water coming in through the crack and we fixed it. About a month later she called me up and said she was getting water in the basement. I asked her if it was near the crack, and she said it was about 5 feet away in the...

I got a call recently from a homeowner in Dedham, MA. He sent me some beautiful pictures of a beautifully painted stone foundation. There were three areas with water streaming from it in areas that had been painted. You are welcome to use water proofing paint on your stone foundation, it makes it look nice, but does it really stop water? I don't believe so. We fixed it, we have two methods we can use...

Today, everyone wants an open concept for their home. And even when they are redoing their basement, they want to open that up. It would be nice to get rid of some of those lally columns that are in the way, especially if you are putting in a pool table or something like that. We get the question “can I move my lally columns” pretty often. You can do whatever you want to do, however...

I went to a structural engineering conference recently and lally columns were of particular concern. They talked a lot about rust on lally columns, steel lally columns that are filled with concrete in particular. If there is rust on the lally column, even at the bottom, it can reduce the strength of it up to 40%. That’s significant. They recommended lally column replacement if there is rust on it. What’s involved? You have to break...

This week we have four horror stories that have to do with basement waterproofing. The first is misdiagnosing the problem. With years of experience we can usually diagnose what the problem is. I’ve gone into homes where owners have put in sump pumps near a finished basement wall because water is coming in under it. I go outside and there is a foundation wall crack. It’s not ground water which needs a sump pump, they...

We are in the middle of a miniseries discussing concrete floor cracks. Our last episode discussed how to fix cracks in floating floors. But what if a homeowner discovers a crack in a concrete floor and the concrete has started to sink? When they don’t have the money to replace the entire floor, here are the other options. The first is to break that area of the floor, dig down, compact the floor; perhaps it...

One type of basement floor cracks you may find is in floating floors. What is a floating floor? Well, the foundation and walls are poured first; then gravel is brought in and compacted. The soil under the gravel is compacted as well. Then plastic is put down. Once this is all done, the concrete floor is poured to the basement walls. The good news is that most residential construction is done this way, which means...

I was referred to a woman who lives in Boston because the home inspector said there were multiple problems with lally columns and one in particular. I asked her to send me photos, which were right in her home inspection report. I couldn’t believe what I saw. What I saw was a temporary lally column sitting on the cement floor and what was on top of the lally column in between the beam and the...