Browse Forums Paving & Concreting 1 Jan 10, 2010 8:17 pm Howdy all the names Zee and from the gong. Been here for a bit and never did an intro thingy as.. well.. ummm.. shy! Nahhh, just didn't have a legit way to break the ice...so to speak Anywho....intro comes with a question to the concrete gurus Just a bit of background... We (wife and I), obtain our lovely 2 storey red brick 70's residence about a decade ago ...and gutted and renoed it ...as ya do So.. left over is the basement! 3 rooms and a hall way measuring up at 50 sq.m we use for storage...but the ground/floor is still dirt (clay) To tidy this area up, me thinks concreting the floor and rendering the walls as they're just exposed common house brick..yeah?? me questions go like this: 1. whadaya use to stop damp coming through the concrete (smell, mould etc)? 2. As this area will also be used for a home workshop as well as junk accumulator region (hate clutter!!! ), from your vast experiences, what strength and thickness concrete would be in the ball park...and will or should I chuck mesh in it too? 3. Being that the walls are up first and creting will be done up to 'em, does it therefore require an expansion gap around the perimeter to alleviate expansion and contraction forces on the walls (or because being the basement where the temp is more stable, this maybe unnecessary)? Annnnnnd... ya best tip for a top tradie ..both creter and renderer in the illawarra region ..oooh, and some meterage prices on applying render would be handy too Thanks all for reading my jib...look forward to ya responses. Cheers Zee Re: Basement concreting 2Jan 11, 2010 9:32 am Short answer is that there are one or two right ways to do this and about a gazillion wrong ways. The right ways are expensive and will take a lot of planning and coordinating. The wrong ways are cheap, fast but will leave you in 5 years with a dank, stale basement and feeling that you were ripped off. If I was looking at it for you then I would engage an engineer to determine the best way to construct the walls for long term watertightness and so that the drainage etc is thought through and designed to work. Once you have a design then you can plug in your own trades but the professional approach up front is the way to go. Not sure if this helps but you have a potential headache on your hands if you are not careful about how you approach this issue. Good luck and let us know how you go. Builders are people too.... DIY, Home Maintenance & Repair to do it properly you need to dig out the garden and waterproof the outside of the wall. There are some products you can put on the face of the bricks but the water is… 2 4626 It will be neat but you won't have much freeboard. At least they are not weep holes. Are you in a high intensity rainfall region? The regulatory slope is only required… 3 8282 We've had decent weather for last 7 weeks and now the drvieway has been cut out we had an evening of 50mm of rain including all the water from half the street, ground is… 0 4478 |