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Cellar Waterproofing
Perhaps it’s time your cellar became the home office you’ve always wanted. Maybe you need extra play space for the kids to reclaim the living room. Whatever your plans are for the room downstairs, you must ensure it’s well protected against the elements.
Cellars are prone to hydrostatic pressure from the ground around them. The pressure created small cracks and imperfections that water will exploit. The movement of water into the walls and infrastructure will create an inhabitable space, potentially hazardous as a result of the damp, dingy conditions.
Traditional Cellar Waterproofing Solutions
There are traditional solutions used by many to stem the attack from the water. These include cellar tanking, which involves coating the inside walls with cementitious pastes that will create a barrier to water ingress. This has been used for many years and is a perfectly acceptable approach to waterproofing a cellar.
However, this treatment is prone to cracking if subjected to regular vibrations over a sustained period of time, for instance, near a road or busy commuter route.
The other treatment that has been used in the past is a French Drain. Generally, a solution that is installed while building the house, the French Drain, involves the installation of pipework deep, around the building, surrounded by stones and then covered in soil. The pipework then moves away any water that seeps through the soil and stones to avoid the pressure building on the sides of the buildings.
One of the key issues with French Drains is without proper filters, they can block due to the sediment that comes with water of this nature, and the drains need to be dug up to resolve the problem.
Modern Waterproofing Solutions
While both these solutions are perfectly acceptable, many new builds opt for an alternative approach.
While the other two aim to keep the water out, this new waterproofing solution aims to allow access to the walls for the water that is then managed out of the building by a series of pumps that reduce the pressure on the walls reducing the chance of cracks.
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