Looking at the foundation.

Good day to all,
Today we will talk about the foundation of your basement. If you live in an older home in the Toronto area, you would most likely have a foundation of field stone, concrete blocks or a more recent one of poured concrete. Before you finish your basement you should check around to see if there are any leaks or signs of leakage.With field stone foundation walls the mortar would have disintegrated and turned to dust by now and you would probably have some seepage or out right running water. If the leaks are minor ones and the field stone just gets damp then you might be able to do a fix from inside. First you could pressure wash the joints between the stones or use a wire brush or a pointing tool to remove the loose mortar. Then using a pointing bag you could fill the mortar joints with fresh mortar and squeeze it into the joints and pack it in with the pointing tool. After you fill all the open joints you could mix some parging cement or mix portland cement with sand and use a concrete adhesive and water to mix the cement together and apply it to the foundation wall from the bottom up to the top with at least a 1/4 of an inch thick cement and trowel it smooth. After the parging has dried there are several concrete sealing products on the market that you could apply with a roller or a cement brush that would seal the wall and prevent any water from penetrating the inside of the wall. One product we use which does a superb job is called Drylok and you could purchase it at Rona.You apply the first coat then wait about 3 hours and then apply a second coat, if needed a third coat could be applied. You could use this same procedure for an untreated concrete block wall.
    With a concrete block wall if there is a crack, you could chip the crack in a V groove approximately 3/4 in deep and fill the groove with a fast drying hydraulic cement. You could apply the Drylok directly to the unfinished block wall.
    If you have a poured concrete wall with a crack you would have to use a 2 part epoxy to seal the crack.
What we use is a Sika product. First you would use the Sika Anchorfix to adhere the ports over the crack with intervals of approximately 6 ins apart, then fill the exposed crack between the ports with the same Anchorfix adhesive. When the Anchorfix adhesive has hardened you could now fill the ports starting from the bottom port first with the 2 part epoxy Sika Crack Fix Super low Viscosity Resin. As you fill the bottom port the Epoxy will fill the crack all the way to the exterior of the foundation wall and will rise to the port that is immediately above it. When you see the epoxy flowing from the above port withdraw the Crack fix applicator and cap the bottom port.Continue the same process of all subsequent port till you reach the top port. Do not skip any ports but always proceed from the bottom port upward to the next port directly above. Let it set for 24 hours and check for leaks. If there is a lot of rain you could monitor the crack for leaks. If there is no rain fall you could run a garden hose around the area of the crack from the outside of the foundation wall and check for leaks.
The other method for fixing leaky basements would be to excavate the dirt around the exterior of the basement walls, search for cracks, fill the cracks as you would the interior, parge the walls, replace the weeping tiles if needed, apply a bitumen to the parged walls,  then apply a Delta wrap membrane from the weeping tiles up to just above grade, caulk the top of the membrane and then back fill  the cavity.
If you have any questions you could contact Jerome Sammy at 416-885-3987 or visit our Website at www.fbscto.com. Hope that this article has been helpful.
Next we will  deal with the basement concrete floor.

Jerome Sammy
416-558-3987
www.fbscto.com
info@fbscto.com