Bituthene

To keep the basement dry, Counterforce has installed a waterproofing system called Bituthene (other entry). It's a sandwich: concrete foundation wall, waterproof membrane, dimpled plastic sheet, water-permeable filter fabric, dirt. Water in the soil will flow through the filter fabric, down the face of the dimpled plastic sheet, into the piping system around and under the basement and finally into the sump. In order to keep debris and dirt from clogging the system, the top of the "installation sandwich" needs to be sealed.

Counterforce came today and installed a metal "header" to keep out the dirt and debris:

On top of the header, they squeezed some black goo out of a tube to fill in any cracks. Here's looking at a larger stretch of the stuff:

When done, they trim off the excess material, which you can see in a pile in the picture above. Here's another close-up of a section of wall where the waterproof membrane hasn't yet been trimmed:

They even installed this inside, under the house:

The black goo has a really high vapor pressure -- we've been smelling it all through the house. I hope it finishes off-gassing soon.

The debris pile generated by today's work:

Tomorrow they're going to put in the permanent drain pipe for the sump.

posted by noel on 11/16/05