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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Basement leaks repaired

Greg received a call yesterday from our foundation repair contractor.  They had a cancellation and had an opening today and could get us in to get the cracks in our basement repaired.  The Cincinnati area has been hit with a lot of water over the past couple weeks and it was only a matter of time before the ground became saturated enough that the basement leaked again so we took the appointment and I took the day off.  It was a good thing we decided to take it because it rained again last night and there was water in the basement when I got there this morning. 

Let me take a step back and explain the repair.  We are having two separate repairs done in the basement.  First, since the foundation has shifted and is bowing slightly we need to have steel pilasters installed every 3.5 feet along the right and back walls of the garage and basement.  This will prevent further shifting.  The reason for the foundation shift is because the house is built into a hill and the pressure from the hill has caused the bowing and cracks in the walls.  These issues are fairly common in Cincinnati, many houses are built into hills - they call it the city of seven hills for a reason.    The second repair is to repair the existing cracks to stop water from coming into the basement in the future.  This was what we had done today.  The basement does not leak with every rain fortunately but it has 2-3 times over the past couple months that we have seen during our inspections.

Here are a couple of the before pictures from our inspections. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pictures today until it was too late to show the cracks.  




It was interesting to watch him do the repair.  Basically he used a chisel and chipped into the cracks and opened them a little further, about every 6 inches he put in a port and surrounded them with epoxy.  When he was done with this he injected polyurethane into each of the ports and it expands and fills in the cracks.  He said the polyurethane dries pretty quickly and we should see fairly quickly if there are any leaks.  After that he sanded down the wall until it was smooth and applied a cement patch over the crack.  He said if we want we can paint the walls.  There is enough painting to do in other parts of the house, I think painting the basement is far into the future.  Here are the after pictures from today's work: 









While he was working I decided to take advantage of the chance to get some work done in the house with no kids around.  I started to paint the room that will be in the play room.  I was able to get a first coat on 2 of the walls.  It is going to take two coats (hopefully not three) to completely cover the pink that is on the walls.  I love the paints with primer built into them!  When I'd had my fill of painting I stained and sealed our picnic table and did a little weeding out front.  By the time I picked up the girls I was wiped out!  We are taking it easy tonight with mac n cheese and Sleeping Beauty.  


The girls helped apply my paint samples!  Quite messy!


There isn't much light in this room, the yellow is much brighter than it appears. 




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