So, ah...

[thanate]

Don't know if any of you can speak to this one, but is there such a thing as a primer/sealant that works despite surface dirt? Because short of taking out the entire staircase and about a week of scrubbing, there is no way the basement wall that needs to be sealed is going to be a clean surface.

What we have now is a gallon of drylock, and many layers of older peeling drylock on the floor where the seepage ended up sitting, and then some expanse of bare & Very Dirty wall (which I just swept off and scrubbed down, but there's only so much I can do, particularly with the staircase in the way) that needs to be sealed.

---ETA, with pictures:


Problem 1, underneath the steps. This is (probably) where the water has been leaking in; the landing is about 2.5 feet up off the floor, making it very difficult to squeeze under the support beams and actually clean anything. The pipe is perhaps 2" away from the wall-- enough to squeeze a paint brush in, but not conducive to cleaning first. Oh, and the light is the bedside lamp brought down from upstairs so I could see any of this...

After doing some sealant research, I suspect that this is not just unpainted/unsealed surface-- it is probably a coat of thoroseal or the equivalent. Unfortunately, it has a nice crack that runs roughly behind the join in the pipe, and there's a bit of chipping where it meets the floor/drylock layers, either of which could be a water problem.


Problem 2; I pried up the bottom step so that it was possible to get to this back corner, beyond where the pipe is held up by a stack of bricks. (Oh, and did you notice in the last picture that the corner stair support doesn't remotely touch the ground?) This surface in the back corner was about an inch deep in dirt and chipped edges of thoroseal when I got to it, and in the depression in the middle the concrete is going back to sand. This may mean that it is another seep, since it was clearly never painted, and its integrity as a structural surface is... questionable.


And problem 3, which is the subsequent floor paint damage-- it's pretty clear that there are at least 4 layers of successive drylock or other sealant paint that were just overpainted without cleaning up previous layers, and while this particular patch started coming up due to spilled laundry detergent, it's now in about this state all the way to the low corner of the basement (er, 10 feet-ish?) due to successive occasions of standing water from leakage from under the steps. While I suspect that the under the steps bit is the first priority, ought properly to be dealt with by removing the washing machine & possibly the utility sink, scrubbing up *all* the old paint, and putting down a fresh coat.

Comments

[lagged-variable.livejournal.com]

Depends what you mean by "dirty". Is there actually dirt on the wall that comes off when you touch it, or does it just look stained and gross?

If there is really "dirt" there, nothing will work great; you need a smooth, fixed surface to paint on. If it's just nasty-looking, then most primers should be all right. Back in my days working in the wallcoverings section of a large hardware store (I actually do have relevant experience!), whenever someone would come in with a story like so: "I just moved in, and the former owners were smokers, so everything is tarry yellow and brown", or "we had some water leakage, so now there's a big brown stain on our ceiling", we'd always refer them to Kilz-2, which (in our professional assessment) was the best for such tasks. It might take a few coats, but unless the primer market has changed substantially in the last 7 years, look for that.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Sadly, this is actual "every time I run the whisk broom across it, another cloud of dust rises in my face" territory. I strongly suspect it hasn't been cleaned for the last 50 years or more, and there's a small patch of decaying concrete and everything. And of course the reason it hasn't been done is that it's underneath the staircase, the corners are just about impossible to get to.

The Kils-2 stuff actually looks like it might be worth looking into for some of the upstairs, if we ever get around to that, but I think we need something with actual moisture seal for the basement.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Assuming you've used a variety of cleaners to try to get the dirt off, my view is that if it's still there after a week of scrubbing it can be regarded as structure and don't worry about it. Sand it a bit to get it level and remove any of the flaky bits, but just use a strong sealer to bond over it all.

(of course, this may be very very bad advice, and maybe a professional website would have better information)

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

If you are getting a lot of dust off the concrete and have doubts about it actually staying intact, I would lean towards using a solvent based primer/sealer rather than waterbased. The solvent based coatings are solution polymers rather than latex beads, so they penetrate better into porous surfaces of dubious integrity. Depending what the can says, you can still topcoat with waterbased if you want. The big caveat here is your ventilation situation, which is probably not great in the basement. You don't want to gas yourself out. (Um, also to worry about pilot lights and cleaning solvent fumes.)

[thanate.livejournal.com]

So would you think something like Zinsser Watertite (http://www.zinsser.com/product_detail.asp?ProductID=77) perhaps? Ventilation is not excellent, but there are windows we could open and a fan to set up, and if necessary, we can turn off the gas (now that the furnace is off, the only thing with a pilot light at present is the water heater, which we can live without for a day or two if necessary).

There's only really that one pocket that says "decaying concrete" to me, although the thin edges of the previous patching-style coating have broken off a bit. But I'm having this problem that my archaeology brain says, "Oh, yes, this is cleaned up," while my housewife-brain (who knew I had such a thing?) says "But that's filthy! There's no way anything will adhere to that!" and the little reasonable (or was that lazy?) voice in the back of my head is trying to tell me that surely there's some kind of solvent/paint/superglue thing that'll soak into the dirt and just stick it down. Even though I'm sure I would have run across it by now if there were such a thing...

I think our other option (prompted by the weather forecasts for the next few days) is to wait and take a look at what bit actually is leaking the next time it rains, and plan accordingly.