Sealing up the Foundation - Hopefully!

I posted over a week ago about water leaking into our basement at the new workshop.

The solution was to dig around the foundation on the outside and apply a membrane over the outer walls.

We hired a man to come with his backhoe and dig along the edge of two sides of the house.

We had to clean as much dirt off the wall as we could. First we used a shovel and then we needed to brush the wall with a stiff wire brush.

The next step was to roll on an adhesive that helps the membrane to stick to the wall.

Then the membrane, which came in rolls, was cut into 6' long sections. These were applied side-by-side, overlapping by about 4", along the wall.  While trying to get it on straight and in the correct place, there is a backing plastic which has to be peeled off. The back of the membrane is like tar and it is VERY sticky and wants to stick to itself so it's a two person job.

We first did the back wall on Wednesday and then went home for supper, meaning to continue on Thursday morning.  But after supper we heard the weather forecast and it was supposed to be pouring rain coming so we went after our meal and quickly did the side wall.  (You can see the white membrane in the photo below)  When we got back Thursday morning, there was quite a bit of muddy water in the ditch that the backhoe had dug.

We then proceeded to feed my shop vac hose into the ditch and remove many full tubs of water.

Then some dirt was thrown into the ditch on the back wall and we are waiting for the side wall to dry up a bit before filling it in.

Such fun, and more money spent!