Do Your Own Survey
6 point checklist to decide if you need to waterproof your building…A 15-minute check can save you precious time and money in future!
We all want our homes to look spick and span and go to extreme lengths to clean our furniture or paint our walls. Yet we forget to take care of some external forces that can bleed into our walls and destroy our furniture and walls. Waterproofing – when done in a timely manner, will help save you a lot of heart and cash burn for your society. Spare 15 minutes to follow this 6 point checklist to decide if you need to waterproof your building.
1. Look for cracks on external building surface -check if these cracks are on a dead wall or on a beam or column, compound wall or terrace parapet and wall water tank area. The number and depth of these cracks help determine the need for waterproofing of your building.
2. Visually inspect any cracks in staircase area with flaked paint due to water leakage or any major breakage due to transportation of furniture through staircase etc.
3. Your terrace area [and usually most ignored but the most vulnerable area]- walk on terrace and tap the surface randomly to identify any hollow sound. A hollow sound signifies loose brick bat waterproofing (commonly called coba). If left untreated, leakage through these slabs directly corrode steel bars and loosen the strength of the slab. The treatment for a loose brick bat is extreme and should be done immediately to prevent more damages.
4. Look for black spots or patches of algae formation on the building surface especially near the balcony area, water tank, parapet wall, dead wall area. This is clear indication that the plaster around is porous and hence needs waterproofing treatment to ensure that plaster does not fall until major repair work is carried out in the building.
5. Lift Room – An important part of the building structure is the lift room which is situated on top of the terrace. Once a wall is damaged due to leakage the expenses to remove the entire electrical connection and to repair the wall again is very expensive. Prevention the wall is the only solution. The walls of the machine room or the lift room have to be treated and kept absolutely maintained and protected from rain and leakages because the machine room consists of heavy electrical connections. Visually inspect any dark black patch which indicates loose plaster and immediately try to rectify and repair as soon as possible.
6. The Water Tank Area -Periodically inspects the base of the water tank from stair hall area. Any leakage from water tank bottom can cause seepage on the ceiling of stair hall which eventually can damage the steel and hence losing the strength of the water tank.
By spending few minutes once a month for the society building will help you identify the future problems related to structure and hence you can prevent any major problems in future. Call us now to know how we can save your time and cost of waterproofing services.
