Residential Basement Waterproofing After Summer of 2013 Flood Raises Toronto Real Estate Property Value

On weds Sept 9th 2013, a wet basement calls forth a couple of very experienced ‘Dry Guys’ who tackle the waterproofing project from inside the house!  They make it look easy because they’re very efficient, and full of handy DIY tips and tactics.  These guys are good people and I learned a lot while hanging out with them for an afternoon.  Scarborough Jack and Ian Boghagdan know that a good happy house has to have a warm and dry cellar, and they know that a house for sale has to advertise that is has a warm dry basement esp after it flooded in the July 2013 storm of the century.

The Summer of 2013 will probably go down in history as being one of the wettest seasons on record. It rained for weeks at a time and one flash flood in late July dumped an entire month’s worth of rainwater onto the city in one night.  People who have never had a basement flood were suddenly deluged, and one such residential property was the house across the way… just fresh on the Toronto real estate market.

Myself and a nosy neighbor had the pleasure of watching a residential DryShield Waterproofing Solution Corp team tackle the job from inside the house. They were in and out of the space of a week, and they didn’t make a lot of noise about it.

The first phase of the assignment was to remove the moldy drywall and wet insulation from the summer flood.

Six garbage bags of material were brought outside on the very first day, and a few more the next.  The wall was filled with old newspapers, fiberglass insulation and sawdust as the piece on Dumpdiggers blog illuminates no animals were seen or harmed.

The house is very clean at the moment, as the homeowner has moved out of the domicile on account of the flood.  The torrential rain drowned his prospects of a quick summer sale, but the waterproofing work is also fast and relatively painless. While I watched, the DryGuys went about clearing the wall under which the run-off entered the basement and they began cracking away the concrete under the wall to make an eight inch gully along which they ran a long length of perforated plastic pipe covered in a course silky hose . The trench slops down into a well in which there’s an electric sump pump.

The internal gutter remedies wet basement in Toronto story on Fuel Ghoul outlines the building supplies and gives more details alongside original pictures from my Typepad photo hosting account.  There is another story about how frost action cracks Victorian era brick walls on the Distillery District blog.

The wall of the basement is then affixed with a thick plastic membrane that has nipples and runnels to drain away any excess moisture down into the freshly dug gutter at the bottom of the wall.

Here is Scarborough Jack cutting the plastic waterproof membrane with a special blade; this stuff is hard to cut.

Next it must be nailed to the wall.  Look how Bogdhon has maneuvered the piece to fold it over the joint between the wall and the floor.

This is literally a ‘dry shield’ that covers the cement wall and forms a barrier between the wood and drywall and wet concrete.

Do you see how it overlaps? And how it ends over top of the eight inch gulley.  Wall panels will cover this trench with a special wainscoting or floorboards trim.

There is a Bizcovering article about waterproofing wet basement from inside the home which also outlines these procedures and has even more original pictures and DIY tips.

Snow Removal Service Uses Beetroot Juice as Natural Deicer

Dan Shephard operates a successful snow removal service in Durham region and is testing the water (literally) after trying a new natural deicer made from beetroot juice.

Geomelt is made here in Ontario.

Featured in a popular Bizcovering article, Snow Removal Service Uses Beetroot Juice as Natural Deicer, Dan was again chronicled in Fuel Ghoul blog about the green snow removal solution simply because he agreed to help test the beetroot snow melt product.

Rock salt depositories – rock salt is very toxic substance and is harmful to the ecology of many sensitive freshwater systems. Any reduction in the use of this compound to keep highways safe for drivers is a step in the right direction for the environment.

When red beet juice is added to rock salt water it lowers the mixture’s freezing temperature which keeps the cement wet on cold  weather days when the rest of the landscape is frozen solid. By making the salt more effective, contractors can use less.

Dan is among the few professionals selected by researchers to help advance the science by conducting real-world testing as a professional contractor. The GeoMelt product is being tried all across Canada and the US in several climates and ‘test counties’.

Drivers who live in test counties  where highway maintenance crews spray the beet juice compound on the roads should experience fewer delays behind snow plows and salt trucks.  Ideally, the deicer will be so effective that snow plows wont make second runs.

Beetroot Juice is a Powerful Natural Deicer for Concrete Sidewalks, and Asphalt Roads

Applying a NaCl salt brine and beetroot mixture to paved surfaces will make them safer by melting slippery snow and ice, but the spring runoff should also be much safer for the environment.  Water quality tests will be performed by public and private agencies all winter and spring 2014.

How Does it Work? After a parking lot or street has been treated with beetroot juice and salt mixture, further precipitation should melt on contact with the ‘wet’ surface because the beetroot juice and salt doesnt freeze. .The frozen water particles are excited by the beet juice (and NaCl)  on an Atomic level, and do not freeze solid into ice.    Dan Shephard has committed The Snowmen to trying the beet juice deicer in the upcoming winter season,

Post by Robert Campbell on Aug 31, 2013