Waterproofing

Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Mon 19 January 2009.

Looks like today was a fun day with gooey black tar. This stuff is used to waterproof the foundation poured concrete walls that form the conditioned part of the house. The walls forming the unconditioned parts apparently are not waterproofed, such as the area under the entranceway, the stairs leading down from what will be the back porch, and the unconditioned area under the porch. I bet it wasn't fun to be slather that stuff all over the place in the cold we've been experiencing lately. I also hope that the stuff still works when it's slather on in that cold!

The bay window was framed out today, or mostly so. That's gonna be a really nice touch to the exterior view.

No word yet on the ejector pump. Tom dug down about 12" and did not see the top of the sewage line, but the plumber still needs to come in and take a look to give us the final word. We discussed re-arranging the bathroom in the basement to make it fit if necessary. We'll see...

The framing of the new living space was delayed because Tom was waiting for word from the stucco guy, just to make sure tolerances were set for marrying the old and new part of the house. The old part will of course be stuccoing over brick, while the new will be wood. The wood needs to be 1/2" back from the brick so that it can accept the mesh that the stucco will be applied to.

The one bummer is that there will have to be a seam between the old and new parts of the house. This makes sense because the original house has been settling for 70 years. We're concerned that the caulk seam will be too noticeable.