Daily Home Renovation Tips

If this part of our basement was unfinished, that would be it as far as sealing the foundation wall crack (still a bit more work though would be needed to complete the backup drain component of the FlexiSpan wall crack repair system, as we shall see).

In our case, as you have seen the area where the crack in the foundation wall occurred was in a finished portion of our basement.

In less than an hour Fitz will  have finished the backup drain in the opening within the concrete floor and will have repaired the opening in the drywall by replacing the insulation, repairing the break he made in the vapour barrier as well as repair the break in the drywall itself.

If Fitz simply applied the replacement insulation, it would stick to the urethane overlay sealant. This in and of itself wold not necessarily be a problem.

However, what if in the future for some reason I need to again break the drywall and remove the insulation against the sealant overlay part of the FlexiSpan wall crack repair system? Perhaps I want to remodel that area of the basement? No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy right? Well, if I did need to remove those pieces of insulation, they could cause the removal of the urethane overlay and thus compromise the effectiveness of the foundation wall crack repair as well as its warranty.

So, the approach used was to apply what is called a clean space membrane on top of the urethane overlay sealant.

This material, pink on the one side and white on the other, is used for different water proofing purposes by Clarke Basement Systems including preparing a cold cellar.

Now, Fitz applied the pink side of the clean space membrane onto the urethane sealant overlay. You can see in the above picture how he applied a bead of urethane sealant on either side of the urethane sealant overlay to ensure that the membrane would remain in place.

He smoothed out the clean space membrane all along the foundation wall crack FlexiSpan crack repair system.

Now when he applies the replacement insulation, there will be no issue if some time in the future I need to remove that insulation.

The next step is to install the CactusBoard, which you can see a portion of underneath the excess piece of the clean space waterproof membrane on the floor in the picture above.

Select this link to continue to the next article in this series and see the installation of the CactusBoard portion of this basement water leak solution.