Today we are looking at the basement of a stone foundation masonry home. It’s not a brick veneer house, but a real brick masonry home with a stone foundation.
Cement
This home has a lot of negative end waterproofing on it. And that’s why you see the blistering happening in these spots. We’ve advised the homeowner to stop doing this, although it wasn’t done by them. They can take a wire brush to the walls and let it breathe, because the hypo cement can cure itself.
Hypo cement has a high limestone content. If you hire someone to do some tuck point work for you, and they don’t understand that, you may need to find someone else to do the work.
We will be working in and out of the door because the windows are blocked. What that tells me is that the house is not moving around a lot. If the house was moving, these glass blocks would shear. They break as soon as a house moves too much.
Add Drain Tile
Adding a drain tile system is going to be the waterproof solution here. We’ll also add a step up because we can see the footing is exposed here. So it’s a real straightforward job. The big challenge is finding the 10 feet around the perimeter to work. That will be a challenge in the area around the furnace. That’s a difficult item to move so we’ll work around it.
Washer and Dryer
Let’s talk about the plans for the washer and dryer. We could use the existing platform. But this is another example of why we wouldn’t want to build this up too much. At some point this fell down. It’s not a serious problem because it isn’t structural. It can be corrected. We’ll just clean up this area and a few other similar spots.
The Exterior
After a tour of the outside, we can talk about why maybe some of these things are happening, then talk about a plan to stop them. Also, we’re going to want to try and put the pump back here in one of these corners. So we’re going to see what the yard looks like and what makes sense. Thanks a lot.