Today, Stephen with Waterproof Solutions is in Eureka, MO, doing a walk through of an older home with Cast-in-place foundation. Follow along as Stephen talks about repairing the work of a previous company.
Transcript
Stephen
So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. This is Stephen from Waterproof Solutions with my buddy here, John, and we're at one of the houses that he's bought. And what you know, you did realize that you bought a cast in place foundation that had some work done to it, but you knew it wasn't terrible. You just saw that the work was a little different than what you'd seen in the past.
John
Correct.
Stephen
So, when you called me, wasn't that what you said was, you mentioned the name of the company, which doesn't matter. So, the first thing that we'll address is, the fact that the concrete itself, I think they had a tough day that day. And the reason I say that is we've got a cold pour in the back.
When we're looking at the back of that. See where the truck had poured out and there's a line there? Well, that managed to make the mix. What happens is we don't vibrate inside the concrete when these residential homes are built. So sometimes we get what's called a cold joint.
The concrete footing, then the concrete wall, then the concrete floor. I mean, our basements are basically built out of cold joints. I mean, we build swimming pools tighter than that. So it's real important that we make sure that any water collected that hits the roof or around the house is sent away from the house, and we seal anything that feeds the rebar.
So, what happens is this is carbon fiber. Now it's not on there very well. Whatever and you don't wanna get this in your skin because I'm telling you it's forever pushing back out, but they've left the epoxy skin on.
And let me show you over here where the injection was done. So, carbon fiber gives tensile strength back to concrete. So, concrete has a tensile strength of ten percent. So, if you have four-thousand-pound compressive concrete, ten percent breaks it this way.
So forty eight gallons, four hundred pounds breaks four thousand pounds. So, we have to be very careful with it. And when it wants to go through the metal tabs that go through the walls, they'll feed the rebar. And that's what's happened here. So, they've injected it and we can see that there's a yellow inside there. It's a foam. That's closed cell urethane. I'm assuming that's what it looks like. And that's good. See how well they prepped the wall? That's good.
It's a foam. That's closed cell urethane, I'm assuming. That's what it looks like. And that's good. See how well they prepped the wall? That's good. To put carbon on, all of this needs to then be removed after that's been put in there because this was nothing but a vehicle. This allowed the closed cell to get into that eight-inch-thick wall. And that's why we use that instead of epoxy because epoxy is too thick. Just can't get in. So, when that strip and then the carbon is put on, you have something that's bulletproof.
Now the elephant in the room is our bracing. So, remember we talked about lateral movement? That's tension put on a wall. As that tension is put on the wall, if you just inject the cracks and you don't take care of spreading that strength out widely with the carbon, you wind up with a new break. As this is doing.
So this C-channel is an incorrect soldier beam. A correct soldier beam has a footing underneath it. You cut the footing. sits in a peer leg and is attached to three floor joists.
You play the hand, you're dealt. I mean, so it has some things that aren't done just right. If you take care of why it's happening, so get some six-inch gutters on this house, we'll get some landscaping to where we push the water away. We've got a whole lot going for us. If we see any further movement, might be in our best interest to go ahead and jump in. Simple thing to do is actually to just draw a line straight through. And that line will either close and open as it goes wet and dryer or will continue to open, and you'll be able to monitor it. So, thanks for letting us do this, John. This is Stephen from Waterproof Solutions.
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