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The Common Sense of Homeownership Series: Waterproofing in Virginia

June 17, 2011

Most homeowners find water in the basement running out of the walls or flowing across the floor and panic sets in, but usually not surprise. It’s not a surprise because it was a problem during the last rainy season, or even the one before. They have called the water clean up professionals, or the more resourceful homeowners have cleaned it up themselves, fighting the flow sometimes for 24 hours or more, trying to not lose anything else to water damage.

Some of the veterans have battle plans and contingencies because it has become routine. Some have sump pumps with battery backups, dehumidifiers and turbo fans. Some have spent small fortunes having their basements jack hammered up, the walls injected and covered with dimpled plastic. None of which solves the problem or provides peace of mind; because when those methods fail, the warrantees only cover the materials that didn’t work, but you still end up getting charged for the labor to replace what didn’t work.

Common sense would tell you that if the water gets into the walls, then your house isn’t waterproof. If you think of your house as a house boat and the basement as the hull, would you accept putting another pump in as the best means of stopping a leak? If your house boat sits high and dry at low tide, would you doubt that the next time the tide came in it would leak? If you paint the inside of your boat with waterproof paint, would it stop a leak? If you put a plug on the hole inside the boat, is the leak really fixed?

If you had a house boat you would take it out of the water, then find the hole and patch it on the outside, where it would have some chance of working long term. By that logic, you have to conclude that the only way to make your basement waterproof is from the outside. The next thing you have to consider is using something that will work. I only know of one product that was designed for exterior application on a basement wall that has been previously buried in the ground. That product is Barrier-P MembraneTM and is exclusively sold by licensed distributors. NVBWS is licensed for most of Virginia.

The next thing to know is that if you overload the boat, the bottom will begin to break. If we put Barrier-P Membrane TM on your walls making them waterproof, but didn’t find somewhere for the water to go, pressure would build until it cracked open the walls and they would eventually collapse from the pressure. The Barrier Dual Drainage Waterproofing System TM is our means to make sure that water pressure is no longer added to the weight of the dirt against the wall by providing a path to take the water away below the floor level of the basement.

You would think that our method would be true waterproofing because common sense says so, and you would be right. So what is everything else being sold as waterproofing? It is one of two things, water management or fraud. I want to caution you on one other quick fix that could result in disaster. If your walls are leaking and someone wants to inject a chemical designed to turn into a waterproof gel in the ground outside your basement walls, that gel adds considerable pressure to a wall under a lot of strain that could cause a foundation failure, and might cost triple in repairs to have it done correctly. Our recent experience has shown us that repairing a broken wall can add 20 to 30 thousand dollars to a basement waterproofing job.

At NVBWS we do basement waterproofing. It isn’t easy, but it is done right. Look at what we do and common sense will tell you we do it right. www.NVBWS.com. NoVa Barrier Waterproofing Systems, LLC.

This entry was posted in Basement, Flood, Home, Water Leak, Waterproofing and tagged basement foundation repair, Basement Waterproofing, Basement Waterproofing VA, Crawl Space Waterproofing, exterior waterproofing, foundation leak, Foundation Waterproofing, home remodeling, home repairs, interior waterproofing, leaking basement, mold remediation, Northern Virginia, NoVa Barrier Waterproofing Systems, NVBWS, rain, Richmond VA, sealant, VA Basement Waterproofing, water intrusion, water leak, water prevention, water proofing, waterproof, wet basement, Winchester VA.

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The Common Sense of Homeownership Series: Waterproofing in Virginia