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thanateDon'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.
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.