Repairing, Restoring and Repurposing Old Decking: Tips. Ideas and Facts
About Me
Repairing, Restoring and Repurposing Old Decking: Tips. Ideas and Facts

A deck is a beautiful outdoor asset to your home, and the right deck can make your living space seem larger. Hi, my name is Jackie, and I am a lover of all things related to the home. I enjoy decorating, repairing, restoring, and reading about ideas and even cleaning. Thanks to the success of our family business, I am able to work from home, and as I spend so much time here, I want it to look beautiful. If you want to have a beautiful home, I want to help you as well. In this blog, I am going to focus on decks in particular. I want to talk about repairing them, restoring them and reusing their old wood in new projects. If you want ideas or inspiration, I invite you to stay, take a look and enjoy these posts.

Repairing, Restoring and Repurposing Old Decking: Tips. Ideas and Facts

Sources of Water Penetration via External Walls

Esperanza Arias

Your home's exterior walls suffers the constant beat down of harsh weather elements like heavy and constant rain. Over time, this may lead to water seepage, which may in turn cause serious structural integrity issues in the building. If you have just built a new house, you may want to know the causes of water ingress through the external walls of the building so that you can take appropriate measures to ensure that it is properly waterproofed. Here is a look at some common reasons as to why water may seep through your exterior walls.

Deteriorated mortar joints

If your walls have been built from bricks or concrete blocks, you should watch out for the gaps that may be formed at the mortar joints due to water penetration. Mortar joints usually get eroded or cracked near the foundation of exterior walls due to capillary action. Deteriorated mortar joints can be repaired through repointing.

Repointing is not a difficult job, but it does require the right tools, the right supplies, and a lot of care to do properly. The first thing a waterproofing contractor will do is analyse the old mortar so as to create a compatible mix for the restoration project. Next, they will use a small handheld tool like a cold chisel to scrape out the old mortar from both the head and bed joints in the affected areas of the wall. Powerful vibrating equipment like electric grinders are avoided because they may exacerbate the problem by forming bigger cracks.

Once deteriorated mortar has been raked out, a pressure-cleaning equipment like a pressure washer can be used to clean out any debris remaining in the joints. New mortar will then be mixed and compactly filled in the cleaned joints. Once the mortar has cured, the mason will brush against it with a hard-tufted brush to rid of any dry mortar specks.

Inadequate wall thickness

Exterior walls that do not have sufficient thickness will not have the stamina required to bear up to the inclement effects of weather, particularly driving rain. Such an error is usually because of a poor construction design that does not take into consideration the challenging weathering effects the wall will be exposed to. A waterproofing contractor can help fix the problem in many different ways. One way is to render the walls. Render choice is based upon the characteristics and properties of each type of render. Because of their water-repelling properties, for example, additives such as silicon can be used with polymer render mix to keep water away from the surface of the external walls.


Share