How’s it going, everybody? This is Lucas Scheele with KC Pier and Kansas City Property Guys. And today we are out in Kansas City, Missouri looking at an interior and exterior waterproofing project that’s going to have a lot of variables to it today. We are currently excavating the outside right now. This is just day one of the project. So let’s go touch base with Brian Dufour, the Director of Operations for KC Pier, and see what we’re doing.
Lucas Scheele:
How’s it going today, Brian?
Brian Dufour:
So far, so good.
Lucas Scheele:
Awesome. Where are we at?
Exterior Waterproofing
Brian Dufour:
Today, we are in South Kansas City, Raytown area for a foundation waterproofing job. The homeowner bought the home and before he moved in, he wanted to fix the back wall and the sidewalk correctly because someone has attempted to fix it two other times. As you can tell, this is their “earth anchor” that they had in the wall. Over time, this failed, so they put in I-beam braces, which you can see where they are. And the I-beam bracing is great. It’s a great thing. But what they did was they put a piece of wood and nails up here, so it wasn’t really supporting anything. So what he wanted to do before he moved in is he wanted to do the full repair plan. He wanted to fix it so he had no more issues.
Brian Dufour:
So what we’re doing today is we’re fully excavating outside, that you can see in the video, and then we’re going to push the wall back. And you can also see these outside as well in the video. They’re stainless steel, so they’re completely corroded. It don’t take that much to go through them, to connect them. So that’s why we’re doing everything from inside and pushing the wall with braces to support it that way.
Brian Dufour:
Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
Speaker 4:
If you do more, you almost got flush with that.
Brian Dufour:
Okay. Ready? One, two … 14, 15, 16 … Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 … 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28.
Lucas Scheele:
How’s it going today, Brian?
Brian Dufour:
So far, so good.
Lucas Scheele:
Where are we at?
Brian Dufour:
Today, we’re in South Kansas City, Raytown doing an interior and exterior waterproofing project. It’s day two of the project. Right now, we pushed the wall back. We got it completely plumb, as in the video. As you heard earlier, we were counting off to slowly push the wall back so we can make sure that we could see if we was causing any more structural damage. And we didn’t. And what you can see up here is this is the line where it was when we started. This is how far we’ve pushed it back. It’s about two, two and a quarter. We got it completely level and we got the other side completely flush as well.
Brian Dufour:
So today, we’re going to get a little bit into the waterproofing material that we use for the wall. It is a MEL-ROL membrane material. It is 60 mil thick. As you can tell here, it comes in 3′ x 200′ rolls, and we cut it to each house because each house is different. And this is very sticky, as you can tell. What we do is once we excavate the wall, we clean the wall off and then we use a primer that you can see here. And what that does is as it starts getting sticky, the membrane material bonds even better with the wall, so that way we know it’s not going anywhere all the way down.
Brian Dufour:
Once we do that, as you can see this little mess here, what it is is this is the overlap. So each membrane overlaps about 2″, and then we come in and we take a liquid rubberized, and then we seal everything all the way down. And then what you can see here is this is the foundation footing here. And what we do is we go over that to make sure that we seal that cold joint from the exterior very well, and then the 4″ drain to go right next to it. So what that does is it makes sure that when we get done, we can give you a lifetime warranty that you’ll never get water through this wall again.
Lucas Scheele:
How’s it going today, Brian?
Brian Dufour:
So far, so good.
Lucas Scheele:
Awesome. Where are we at?
Brian Dufour:
Today, we’re in South Kansas City, Raytown area again. It is day three of the interior and exterior waterproofing project. As you can tell, we have everything excavated. We have the MEL-ROL membrane on. We have everything sealed and we have the exterior drainage next to the footing to catch everything. We did 34′ on this wall. We got it all flush. And as you follow me around the corner, it’s a little tight, we got the side wall as well. We got it all back. Everything is up. And then the 4″ drain is running over. And what we did was we dug underneath the foundation footing and we ran the 4″ drain underneath into a sump pump inside. So that way, we catch all the water. There’s no shortage of a clearance for everything. It runs directly in and then our 3/4 horse pump will push it out to the street to get all the water away.
Interior Waterproofing
Brian Dufour:
So now we’re in the basement. And as you can tell, we’ve got all the beams up. We have our steel plates up with our lags, and everything’s concreted in. We did that all the way around. We have a little cosmetic to do. We have to patch these and seal the cracks a little bit just for cosmetic purposes, nothing structural. We have four beams on this wall and we have seven on this wall. We got the wall back completely plumb, and what we did was we moved the sump pump over there and we took it out of here. It’s no good here because everything was shooting and going uphill in the back, so all it was doing was recycling the water. So we took it out and we put it in the front so we have a more positive slope to the front yard to make sure everything gets away. And as you can tell, everything is concreted that needs to. We have a little button up, but for the most part we’re done down here, and the homeowner is completely happy with what it looks like.
Brian Dufour:
It’s day four on the interior and exterior waterproofing project in South Kansas City, Raytown area. What you can see behind me is you can see the gravel that we brought up. We have the gravel about 5″ under the slab that we had to break out. So when we put it back, everything can be level and it has enough concrete that it won’t break and move. So the homeowner could put his stairs back and get out of his back porch. As you come down, this one, we had to put a little over 50 tons of gravel in, so there’s absolutely no way that this wall is going to move at all. The drainage is going to be great because the entire property is flat.
Brian Dufour:
As you can tell, we got about 2′ of clearance. And what we’re doing is as you come around the side, we already have it backfilled and you can see that we have about 2′, 2.5′ of dirt. What that does is it allows you guys to still do your landscaping, put your small shrubs in, or plant grass, and it’ll come back without doing any major settlement to the structure. And then what we did was we put in two new window wells, and we have the AC pads set. So the AC guys coming back to put that back. And the homeowner will have AC and everything’ll for interior waterproofing will be wrapped up today.
Do you need Exterior and Interior Waterproofing in Kansas City, Missouri? Contact KC Pier today!