The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Do it Yourself Discussion! => Topic started by: Kem on April 14, 2019, 12:01:48 PM
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Good day folks - this winters freeze widened a hairline crack that has existed for a decade to easily an 1/8 inch. Filled the exterior above grade with rubber flex seal.
Ordered applied technologies hydra stop 300's kit and the total cost to repair came to nearly $1500 less than the lowest quote obtained.
Total repair time was about 1/2 to a full a day including research. The most difficult part was the extended crouching in my crawl on legs sore from 2 heavy lift days.
Edit: just checked, and despite a full day of rain - zero water is poring in. Early check appears to be a win
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Nice! Was the crack vertical or horizontal? From what I understand, vertical is nothing to worry about (except for water infiltration).
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Thankfully vertical!
In addition, as the house is on a crawl, the water infiltration caused no lasting damage. I was FAR more worried about future freeze or mold issues.
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How is the exterior?
You don't want to treat the symptoms (the crack) and ignore the disease (water)
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How is the exterior?
You don't want to treat the symptoms (the crack) and ignore the disease (water)
That's a good point, but usually vertical cracks are not worrisome in themselves, as they commonly happen as the concrete ages, even if the foundation is good.
"Why is the water so high outside the wall?" Is a good question to ask. We have a similar vertical crack in our basement wall, and I thought water was coming in through it during heavy rain. It turned out to be merely a mis-adjusted sump pump (the water was allowed to accumulate too deep before the pump would turn on). Since I fixed that issue, we haven't seen a drop of water in the basement
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The side of the house with the crack is on the non roof peak. Our house is a narrow long ranch duplex. This means the impacted wall is over 70' long and is VERY tall at the peak with no roof/gutter system to capture the water. Being a bit south of Lake Michigan, a southerly wind can cause tremendous water dumps.