Leak in Garage - who do I engage?

ProStuart

Hi,

Apologies - I posted this incorrectly in "Is this quote fair?"

We have a garage attached to our property & whenever it rains for a long period (obviously hasn't been for a while!!!), we get a water start to make its way into the garage. There doesn't appear to be any specific/single leak but rather the water seems to be coming directly through the bricks/damp proofing.


I had tried painting with about 5 coats of gradually stronger unibond earlier in the year but still the water appeared.


There is no access to the side of the garage where the water appears to be coming from.


Do I need to employ the services of a builder or a more specialist company to deal with this sort of thing?


Has anyone come across anything similar.


Thanks in advance.

Stuart

tony6403

I would try applying Thompson's water seal.

Furts

If you believe it is coming through the wall then you have to stop this penetration. Which means checking roof and gutter deails and whatever you think - we have not seen your garage to know.

Then bear in mind a couple of fundamentals. If your Unibond coating is ordinary pva then you have wasted your time. The external water resistant type would be better. The coating has to be applied to the outside of the wall - coating the inside face is also wasting your time.


Unibond is really the wrong product as mentionned above.

Ant555

There is no access to the side of the garage where the water appears to be coming from.

What is on the other side of the wall - is it attached to another building/garage or do you just have no physical access to the land. Is there anything piled up against it and is the ground level the same.

ProStuart

Our house is at right angles to 3 other houses - so all along the left hand side of our garage/house/garden are the ends of our neighbours gardens. There is a gap of around 6 inches between our left hand garage wall (source of leak) and the neighbours garden wall (same height as garage) so I definitely don't have any ability to access the outer wall.


I had heard there was some kind of injection process that could be done by a specialist in this area - does that mean anything to anyone?


Any other ideas welcomed!!!

bxboards

Unibond sounds horribly like PVA to me, which is inappropriate for waterproofing - as a test, paint some PVA on something, let it dry, then put on a drop or two of water - the PVA will turn white again and re-emulsify.

You need to find the water source if possible - if you can't and it seems you have a very narrow gap, you may be able to tank the outer wall with K11 or similar, but you'd have to apply with a roller, and I suspect you'd miss bits. And ideally, you'd need to render over it.

I assume there is no cavity.

Personally I think chemical injection is a bit of a con....

ProStuart

Thanks - I dread to ask this but are we talking demolish wall & rebuild as the only real option?


I guess it goes back to my original question - who would I contact to make the determination of best solution? Every day builder? Structural Engineer? A.N. Other?

maisie_cat

ProStuart wrote: »

Our house is at right angles to 3 other houses - so all along the left hand side of our garage/house/garden are the ends of our neighbours gardens. There is a gap of around 6 inches between our left hand garage wall (source of leak) and the neighbours garden wall (same height as garage) so I definitely don't have any ability to access the outer wall.


I had heard there was some kind of injection process that could be done by a specialist in this area - does that mean anything to anyone?


Any other ideas welcomed!!!

Can you get on the garage roof and look over the edge down into the gap? It could be that detritus has either accumulated or been dumped in the gap and it has composted creating a bridge. Either that or perhaps the guttering has failed and water is running down the wall on the outside. If you can't get up there and have no friends or relatives who could do so then a general handyman might at least establish the reason for the problem