At long last... Southern Pacific in a garage!

[MK]

Hmmmm....image not visible.   

[SirTainly]

This is very odd, can you see the images earlier in the thread?

[MK]

No I can not.  But from other posters on this thread I can.  Weird!

[SirTainly]

No updates on this as although the door has been removed and bricked up, we've discovered rising damp in the external wall, also wall is now coming in around the new bricked up section as the water cannot now flow into the garage through the door. I've got a second damp expert coming around this week to investigate, as the brickwork is soaked and the concrete floor is showing signs of damp related issues.

[SirTainly]

Well the damp proof guy was a total waste of time. I've ended up sealing the edge of the room with roofing tar. This has stopped some of the damp ingress, but in some places it's just worked under the tar towards the uncovered concrete base. To stop this, I've been painting the rest of the floor with resin based floor sealing paint in a tasteful 'frigate grey', bit light for SP grey, but could be worse!

I'm doing the room halves, so I can keep some items in the room while I paint, but each half requires at least 2 coats, and several days between each one, so it's a slow process. Maybe a photo this weekend.

I have a week off next month to get the ceiling re-insulated and boarded, and as much of the walls as is possible. I want all the storage units back in here before Xmas so I can free up my lounge!

[SirTainly]

Progress continues, despite illness etc. Today replaced some of the roof insulation with new stuff and added battens to keep it in place. Also stripped down the old wall battens to reuse for this and save some money, yay!

Since this photo was taken, I've given the floor nearest to the door, in which I'm standing to take the photo, another coat of grey paint.

[SirTainly]

On Friday all the materials should be arriving to complete the room repairs:

Insulation board
Drywall/plasterboard
8mmx8mm battens (to hold the insulation off the walls)
1.5"x2.5" wall battens
Connectable rubber floors tiles (the sort you get in gyms)

With a bit of help, should get this all done next week since I'm using up my vacation time! Hopefully after that, with all the storage back in, I'll be able to start organising my final track plan and will be able to order lumber for the the first bits of that in the new year!

[SirTainly]

I've made some progress (after working thorugh Xmas and NY) but had some setbacks. With some help I've got all the walls now insulated and boarded, and I've now doing the filling between the boards etc, but the rising damp in the floor is causing issues (again!). The grey resin floor paint was just breaking off in chunks in some places and just not setting in others, it was forming a dried skin but remaining wet underneath.

I've decided to cover the whole floor in the paintable Damp Proof Membrane (that I used around the edges), and then cover that with heavy duty plastic sheeting before laying the rubber tiles on top. I'm adding the sheeting as the DPM tends to stick to feet of workmates/ladders etc and then peel up in chunks when the item is moved. The sheet should stop the DPM sticking to the tiles and thus allow me to replace them at a later date is necessary.

Here is the room with half the floor with floor covered with the Black Jack DPM. The racking needs to be moved before I paint the second half of the room.

[Birdsong]

You can probably paint that floor till the cows come home and you will still have water issues.  You really need a French drain along the outside walls, that way the water will have somewhere to go rather than into the garage.  PITA I know.
John

[SirTainly]

I'm planning to add one at some point, but I'm not sure that'll solve the problem.  The water at the moment is actually coming up through the concrete, rather then flowing in from outside. I'm suspecting that rain that falls on the drive, soaks into the soil and then is drawn up through the floor due to the warmer air inside the garage, but I could be wrong.

[Philip H]

I'm planning to add one at some point, but I'm not sure that'll solve the problem.  The water at the moment is actually coming up through the concrete, rather then flowing in from outside. I'm suspecting that rain that falls on the drive, soaks into the soil and then is drawn up through the floor due to the warmer air inside the garage, but I could be wrong.

You are partially right, but that's still a ground water management issue.  Water always follows the easiest path, and a well designed French drain creates and easy path for groundwater to flow around and away from your slab. unless you have an active spring right below you the hydrostatic pressure you are currently observing as the slab "weeps" into your space won't be strong enough to get past the drain system.

[SirTainly]

I'll get some quotes for adding one, but sadly I can't use the premade ones as my drive is made up of block paving and the sizes of the bricks used don't match the size of the drainage channels available. The other issue is that the drive slopes towards the house and garage, so water is going into the gaps around blocks (as it runs towards the garage) before getting to it, and thus the drain. To solve this I'd need to have the blocks resealed, which makes them shiny and slippery, or replaced with tarmac - not cheap if done properly. I do have a a drainage channel in front of the house which connects to the sewers so if I could connect with this it would help rather than using a soakaway.

[Lemosteam]

Nope not needed.  A french drain is simply a hand dug 8"" wide x at least 24" deep channel filled with pea gravel or larger and it could be covered back up with the original materials.  No drain trough or tubing is required, unless you want to guide the water to somewhere else (that you may or may not have area for).  It really just acts as a below-ground reservoir until the water dissipates into the surrounding dirt below grade (or is guided away).

The pavers and grooves on the drive will actually help the process of getting the rainwater to the "drain".  The grass on top in the image is your driveway (pavers).

[Big Train]

Birdsong is right about painting the floor to prevent water intrusion. I had the same battle with the foundation of my house. Here in Ontario, the trend is to use a poured concrete foundation for basements in current construction. At some point there was a minor hole in the concrete. (Apparently where a worker threw an empty Subway sandwich bag into the foundation while it was poured....no joke). During the spring when the water table was high, water seeped in.

I did manage to prevent further seeping using hydraulic cement similar to this:

https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/p.hydraulic-water-stop-cement-9kg.1000149564.html

and applying a coat of:

http://www.drylok.com/products/drylok-extreme-masonry-waterproofer.php

That did eventually stop the leak and in the meantime I learned a bit about waterproofing basements. Current recommended practice is to prevent water intrusion by treating the outside wall with a waterproofing membrane rather than trying to plug hairline cracks from inside the basement. Reason being the hydraulic pressure of the water table will find a way to penetrate somewhere else in the basement once one area is patched. Kinda like when you have a pinhole leak in the cooling system of a car. Replace a hose or pipe, the next weakest one will fail. Not a matter of if it will fail, but when.

Imagine the basement, or garage floor is like a styrofoam coffee cup submerged into a pot of water and that's kinda the situation any structure finds itself when in a high water table situation. Essentially the concrete is floating to a certain extent. And the water table is under pressure. Normally, water won't be an issue, but under some pressure it's a different story. I have this image of when watching a wartime film about submarines and a depth charge cracks a flange on some pipe of sorts.....

Recently I was in Lowe's and found this product:

https://www.lowes.ca/subfloor/amdry-2-ft-x-2-ft-x-34-in-heavy-duty-subfloor-panel_g2644555.html

It's designed with a plastic waffle pattern on the underside to allow water to accumulate under the subfloor and remain there preventing any further damage to the flooring. Sure could have used this when I first had that water leak. Depending on the amount of water that penetrates the structure, you can either allow it to remain on the slab, if it's minimal, or, engineer a drainage system to allow the water to exit the garage or basement. I think a few ideas for that have been, pardon the pun. "floated" here. I still would have had to repair the leak, but that product could have bought me some time and prevent damage to several boxes of books and my collection of railway photographs.

The funny thing is, after decade to so, all the plants and trees in the neighbourhood draw from the water table water and reduce the water level to prevent rising too high during spring runoff. Never had the problem again.

Hope some of these ideas help and good luck!

[SirTainly]

Ah misunderstood what a French drain was - google also returned the grated channel drains, which is what they tend to use on drives here. I wonder if one would work for this, definitely worth considering.

Just some other information:

The garage is on a concrete slab, as that's the usual method of construction here - basements are very rare here as houses etc are just built on concrete slab foundations.

The garage is actually about 1' higher than the house (I have to go up a couple of steps to get in) but the house doesn't seem to have damp issues but does have a shallow (<6") grated drain running along the frontage.

The second coat on the floor (the DPM) is pretty much tar with some other things. It does seem to stop the water penetrating it, but forces it to come up through any other weak spots (bubble holes in it have been observed to be 'leaking').

I actually had a damp expert come round to investigate, and all he suggested to do was put a layer of asphalt over the garage floor which was undesirable for a number of reasons.

I can believe the subway wrapper thing - I've found similar when fixing this place.

The rubber mats I'm putting on the top have an underside like the one in the link there, but I'd rather not have water going stagant under the floor.