We received a call recently from an owner of a high-end brownstone in Boston that faces the Charles River. The gentlemen who owns the unit is also a developer and a civil engineer by trade. In the bathroom, water was coming in from behind the finished wall. We probed some more with questions, and found that they had tried to stop the water by putting a smear coat of mortar onto the leaking stone foundation and then they added spray on foam insulation. They thought this would stop the water, and so they put the sheet rock back up. However, it still leaked underneath and they called A1 Foundation Crack Repair to fix it.
They didn't want to take down the walls and everything. They wanted us to repair it from the outside. The way a stone foundation is usually made is, if you think of a triangle that you throw stones into. The tall leg of the triangle is what you are looking at from the inside.
Some of these buildings over 100 years ago. The soils have all compacted and those compacted soils are helping to hold up the stone foundation. We could not recommend to dig that out in order to repair it from the outside because you could jeopardize the structural integrity of the foundation wall and have a bigger problem.
But, they wanted this repaired from the outside. A strange thing happened. The very next day, we had a phone call in Waltham, from a homeowner who had taken matters into his own hands. He has begun digging out his stone foundation about 4' down and 10' long because he was having water come in and he wanted water to fix the problem from the outside. He called because the stone was starting to fall in. So, I was able to repair his problem. Then I had the guy in Boston call the guy in Waltham and talk about what happened when they started digging on the outside.
Finally the owner of the brownstone in Boston came to his senses. We had to take the sheet rock wall down, and the foam insulation. We had to discover where the water was coming in, specifically between which stones, and repair that with a method that we use to repair stone foundations and we took care of his problem. Now he has a dry bathroom without water coming in through the stone foundation.
For more information on basement waterproofing and foundation crack repair, contact A1 Foundation Crack Repair.