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Thread: Framing a darkroom against concrete wall

  1. #31

    Join Date
    Sep 2007
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    Re: Framing a darkroom against concrete wall

    That particular house was built in 2000-2001. I am sure California has much tighter/advanced building codes/practices but here in the South things can be more lax. In fact the local codes inspector expressed frustration at the number of DIY projects that refuse to get a permit or even follow basic common sense codes. They have limited power to make a land owner follow the codes. Things are improving, some years ago the State revised many of the codes making them tougher and imposing fines for the offenders. I haven't built a new house since the 2000/2001 house so I don't know what todays standards are for exterior waterproofing cinder block walls are but I can assume the builders will use the absolute cheapest product even if it is not the best.

  2. #32
    Louie Powell's Avatar
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    Re: Framing a darkroom against concrete wall

    Quote Originally Posted by RandyB View Post
    That particular house was built in 2000-2001. I am sure California has much tighter/advanced building codes/practices but here in the South things can be more lax. In fact the local codes inspector expressed frustration at the number of DIY projects that refuse to get a permit or even follow basic common sense codes. They have limited power to make a land owner follow the codes. Things are improving, some years ago the State revised many of the codes making them tougher and imposing fines for the offenders. I haven't built a new house since the 2000/2001 house so I don't know what today's standards are for exterior waterproofing cinder block walls are but I can assume the builders will use the absolute cheapest product even if it is not the best.
    Codes do change, sometimes for the better, and sometimes because less expensive methods and materials are available. But you can be sure that if the decision is theirs alone, contractors will always opt for the least expensive method/materials allowed by current codes. That's probably never going to change.

    When our former home was built in the late 1940s, the standard was cinderbock basement walls with little or no attempt to prevent water incursion. We had an ongoing battle with water - seepage in the Spring that could get as much as an inch deep in some places, and the need to have a dehumidifier running constantly. I really don't miss that situation!

    Our current home was built in 2002; by that time, the standard had evolved to poured concrete basement walls with a mastic applied to the exterior. I don't know if they went to the next step to apply a sheet of plastic over the mastic they way they show on This Old House and Mike Holmes. I think there are drain tiles on the outside. There is no treatment on the inside; instead, there is a channel between the basement wall and floor to capture any seepage that does occur and direct it to a sump. The builder provided a sump drain pipe that goes out to the back of the property, but left it to us to decide if we needed a sump pump. So far, we haven't needed one. The one downside in this arrangement was that field mice used this drain as a way to enter the house in the Fall seeking a warm place to nest for the winter; the builder 'sealed off' the pipe by stuffing a wad of insulating into the end, but that didn't stop the mice. A trip to the hardware store and a plastic cap was a permanent solution.

  3. #33
    Roger Thoms's Avatar
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    Re: Framing a darkroom against concrete wall

    The first house my parent bought when I was about 4 years old had a basement that would flood during the wet season. There could be several inches of water at times. I have do have fond memories of running and sliding on the smooth wet basement floor. The one saving grace is that to save money my folks had bought the house with the basement unfinished. My father with the help of a couple of his buddies rented a jack hammer and trenched up the basement floor, installed drain tile and a sump pump, back filled and then poured back the concrete. I remember being totally impressed when my dad drilled a hole through the concrete basement wall with a star chisel and a small sledgehammer for the sump drain. It was also cool when the sump pump would come on and pump water out to the gutter at the street. A year or two after that project the city came through and upgraded the storm sewer system which involved installing a six foot diameter storm sewer pipe down the middle of our street. Another impressive project for a then probably 6 year old. Anyway that solved the water problem and the sump pump never ran again.

    Roger

  4. #34
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Framing a darkroom against concrete wall

    Unfortunately, my father was the concrete inspector for the start of the Central Valley Project. For the house foundation, he used the same concrete formula as for the dam, and its leftover 1-1/2 inch thick (!!!) rebar. I needed to remove just a four foot section of footing to install a modern heat exchanger. The Swiss embassy had given me a sales sample of a mining-grade rotary hammer built like a Rolls Royce. Every few hundred hours you simply pushed a button and it self-lubricated itself. Even with that, I went through about a dozen carbide bits and a stack of about twenty grinder blades to remove that section.

  5. #35

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    Apr 2009
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    Re: Framing a darkroom against concrete wall

    I do wonder how much water in a basement is too much (to consider partitioning my darkroom). Before I redirected the gutter I would get enough water that could be cleaned up with a couple paper towels at most. Now I get nothing detectable even after leaving aluminum foil taped to the wall for a few days when it's raining outside. Maybe I'm being cheap but having the exterior foundation dug out and waterproofed seems a bit overkill at this point. Especially since this is a half-basement, half-crawlspace home with ceilings too low to ever be considered valid livable space. Now if I was really crazy I would start digging out the half crawlspace and have a very luxurious darkroom.. but I don't have the time or energy for that.

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