This morning M and I started waterproofing the Dome. Oy, this is gonna be a job. The concrete was sprayed onto the matrix of wire and [rebar and rebar and rebar and] burlap, and it wouldn't have taken us an hour to smooth it a bit before walking away. We really wish we'd done that now, because getting the waterproofing compound into all those itsy-bitsy crevices and holes is taking us forever. It also means we really need to slaver the stuff on, and it's not cheap.
The nasty weather finally broke, though. Hardly a cloud in the sky, mild temperatures - if it was like this every day, we'd have to beat the Californians away.
We had a terrible scare with M's water system: The pump wouldn't run, and the cistern was less than half full. That wasn't supposed to happen, but it turned out to be operator error. Our cistern has a float switch that is becoming the bane of my existence. Pretty soon I need to do a post on the two available types of float switch, one of which you should avoid if you're setting up your own system.
4 comments:
That waterproofing goop is cheap in the longrun. The idiots who did our foundation half-assed it & we had to dig out & re-do (full basement, banked to a hill). I was NOT a happy camper. Slather that chit like it was free, you won't regret it.
Joel wrote: "The concrete was sprayed onto the matrix of wire and [rebar and rebar and rebar and] burlap, and it wouldn't have taken us an hour to smooth it a bit before walking away."
Yeah, but Joel, I remember that day, the day the concrete was sprayed on. It was one very, very looooooooong day, as the concrete trucks arived excruciatingly late, the amount of concrete ordered turned out to be insufficient (and more had to come from a far distant place), and it was getting cold and dark before they finished.
Even if you'd have known then what you know now, would you really have had the oomph to so that smoothing?
Sorry about the extra work. But as LJH says ... do it really good once and never again ...
Indeed... my basement leaks some water whenever it rains hard for more than a day... not often, but a real mess when it happens.
I have spent entirely too much trying to fix it cheaply and fast. Rather than do that again and fail, I'm going to have to figure out how to come up with the bucks to dig out that wall and do it right this time. Wish I had all the money I already spent on it. sigh
That is true, Claire. I do remember that day. Vividly and painfully.
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