Greetings All. We just had a sustained rainfall and luckily had very little water come into the basement. The only spot it leaked through is a below grade concrete wall. I thought I heard of a product that expands as it cures in concrete. Is Hydroplug or Hydroseal something that sounds to familiar? Or any ideas to work from the inside? I realize that a proper fix is from the outside, but this was such a tiny leak, it's not worth digging in the neighbors yard..... TIA, Mark
Me too, please! I have a small nuisance leak that shows up once or twice a year, halfway up the poured concrete wall, presumably where a tie bar between the inside and outside forms was. Murphy being Murphy, the outside of the spot is buried under a low deck. Epoxy injection seems to be a work-around worth trying, but I have never seen the kits on the shelf at the borg.
The epoxy injection works great. I watched the process at a neighbour's house and it was very interesting. The workman started at the bottom of the crack and epoxied in place several "nipples," that looked like the ends of caulking tubes, about 8 inches apart all along the crack. He then epoxied over the length of the crack and let everything cure. This took about 45 minutes or so. He then got the epoxy tube and a heavy duty caulking gun and starting at the bottom, he injected the epoxy until it started to come out of the nipple above the one he was filling. He then capped the nipple and starting injecting into the next nipple in line until the next nipple had epoxy show in it. This went on until he reached the top of the crack.
We went outside and epoxy had made its way all the way through the wall and digging down a wee bit indicated that the epoxy had fully filled the crack as far as we could see.
We have had several strong rain storms since the repair about 5 years ago and not once has this repair leaked a drop.
I asked the worker where I could buy a kit to do the work myself and he stated that it was only sold to concrete repair companies and was not available to the public. He also stated that there were various viscosities of the epoxy and the one to use was determined by the width of the crack and the thickness of the wall. Too thin and the epoxy would just run out. Too thick and it wouldn't penetrate the crack fully.
The job was done quickly (a couple of hours at most) and there was no cleanup to do at all.
If ever I have a crack to take care of, that is the method that I will have to repair it.
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