Waterproof?

Not it's not monsoon season in Flagstaff yet...but construction progress has gone from a stand still to rapidly moving backward. Things were moving fairly well last week with completion of the block walls and the second round of the waterproofing. On our daily afternoon walk around the lot, we noticed a little puddle of the black tar stuff that seemed to have seeped under the bottom of the block wall. We were curious and asked the builder if that meant that the wall wasn't really sealed if the tar could run from the outside of the wall to the inside. The builder wasn't overly concerned so we decided to investigate further over the weekend.

The little puddle of black tar

Andy shoveled out all of the clinkers (small rocks they dumped in on top of the drain tile) behind the section of the wall where the drip was. We then hooked up a hose to the neighbors spigot and let it run behind the wall on top of the drain tile. A few minutes later we saw water trickling through the wall. Not to the spot where the tar had seeped through, but three other spots a few feet away! This was pretty alarming since those spots appeared to be fine before we saw the water coming through...the natural question was, "how much more of the wall leaks?" Not exactly the waterproof foundation that we paid for!

The water was rapidly trickling through the wall in several spots between the footer and the block wall.

So after stewing over it this weekend, Andy called the builder early this morning to discuss. Steve and Kip were soon out there running water behind the rest of the wall to see how bad the leaks really were. Steve was shocked at the many leaks he found between the footers and block walls. A crew of "Labor Express" folks were out there all day today shoveling out the rest of the clinkers from behind the walls. This is no easy task...it's a very narrow and deep trench between the wall and the cut in the rock. Steve had the waterproofing done in two sessions so that it'd be easier to get the clinkers in over a half built wall instead of a full height wall like we have now.

Buckets and short shovels were scattered around the lot this afternoon. Looks like they at least have another day of digging to go until they expose all of the drain tile.

The pile of clinkers that they dug out today...

We'll see what Steve and the waterproofer come up with for a fix to this one! Another delay in building but this one is worth fixing right to make sure that the basement stays dry (even though we live in the desert, we get plenty of rain to cause a problem during monsoons).


Words of wisdom for those who ever consider building:
#2 - Go ahead and test even the seemingly obvious things about the house yourself. Apparently it's not routine to actually test things like waterproofing. Imagine how bad this could have been had they finished backfilling, grading and started framing! Andy's persistence is good for times like this :)