I am planning on puttin in a partial basement (concrete walls on two sides). I am going to need to waterproog about 60 feet x 10 feet of total wall. Besides backfilling with pea gravel and tile, what else can I do (or DIY product that I can buy) to waterproof these walls? It is hard to get someone to proffesionly waterproof it because I live in the country and it is such a small job.There is allot of information on this forum, and I do agree with most of it but I have found less do's than not's. Drylock , sanitred, and tar are out. how about other products that you spray on and they crystalize into the concrete? what about sealling the top of the footing before the walls are poored, ect ? I want to be open minded (regardless of answers) from peaple who have tried things and who are installers. I would like replys not arguments. what will work for some will not work for others. The ground is solid clay and the walls 10 feet high. Also, how thick should a 10 foot wall be? I have heard from 8" to 12". P.S.: Yes, I can not spell. THANKS

First, a 10-foot high wall should be at least 12-inch block or 10-inch concrete, and should be reinforced, aand depending on the driection of the joists at the top of the wall, may need pilasters also. This is not a job for guesswork...get yourself some sound professional advice from a competent architect or a structural engineer.

Next, is there any ground water in the depth of the basement? If so, serious waterproofing will be required, and none of the things you mention are anything more than dampproofing. Again, professional advice will be essential.

If there's no ground water, then dampproofing should be sufficient, and for my money, nothing has come along that is any better than TWO brush coats of bituminous dampproofing. If you want belt and suspenders, add a waterproof membrane also, either 6-mil polyethylene sheet, or waterproofing shingle underlayment such as that used on roofs.

I am sorry for not giving all of the info. It will be a " partial walkout underground home" with no first floor.One side and part of the back will be concrete wall. The house is 30 x 60 rectangle. One 30ft side and half of the back (30ft out of the full 60ft) will only be concrete wall. The wall will look like a 90 deegree V, the rest will be framed on the slab. I believe there is no ground water. I am going to put dead man walls comming off of both ends of the concrete walls for support.They will also act a retaining walls. Confused ya yet? Thanks for the reply and any other information.

Yep, confused me even more. What are "dead man walls"?

It sounds to me now like these walls will be in essence CANTILEVER RETAINING WALLS and if so, you DEFINITELY NEED professional advice on the design of these walls, or else the result will not be pretty and the fix then will be expensive. Please don't ignore this warning.

This illustrates the danger of attempting to design things for people in this forum. One can never be certain, without actually seeing all conditions ON-SITE and IN PERSON, that one has been given the proper information.

For example, the walls described in this thread may possibly have to be designed as cantilever retaining walls, which eliminates block as a material, and gets deeply into reinforced concrete, with the size, placement and configuration of reinforcing being EXTREMELY critical, and the shape of the wall is also critical, and may have to be an L-shape with a tapered vertical wall.

Then, since the inside face of the wall will be on the interior of the building, weep holes are not possible, and so hydrostatic pressure will have to be relieved by some other positive method, requiring controlled backfill, possibly a waterproof membrane with a drainage board layer, and a piping system to take any ground water to daylight somewhere.

None of this is appropriate for guesswork by amateurs. It MUST be designed and preferably supervised by a competent professional. The alternative simply BEGS for trouble.

I did not ask for someone to design anything. The question about how thick concrete should be is even an argument for proffesionals. I have seen properly "professianly designed" poored floors and walls crack and or fail do to other factors. Yes, the walls will have to be cantilever with the addition of buttress.Adding pea gravel and pipe will eliminate Hydrostatic pressure because the whole structure will not be sumerged like a full basement,The ends will run to ground level. I leveled a pad for a "proffesional enginer" who worked for the city designing roads and there materials. I cut the pad and he paid me to recut it to "HIS" way. After it rained, he called me to have it recut back to the origenal way it was done because the water was flooding his basement (yes, he built the house with no waterproofing on the outside of the basement and the water ran to his house)Allot of times they are needed, but at times they are no better than the peaple who are out in the field doing hands on(waterproofers,construction workers,concrete workers, ect).All because they have that title does not make them any smarter than ones own research. On this forum I read allot about how peaple are wrong and companys are all out to get everyone. This is not always the case. What might work for someone will not work for others and cost always plays a factor. I just wanted an opinion on DIY waterproofing products. Opinions go a long way, it is how you interpret them. I here so much down grading to products like Sanitred.You never here what products you should use, just that it needs to be waterproofed by a professional. It is hard to get the "BIG" waterproofing companys to do such a small job. All of these companys are located 100's of miles away in big citys because of more money. You can not blame them. Around here everyone settles on tar and a dehumidefer.

Because "professionally designed" walls and floors cracked, we are now equally as well trained and equally as well qualified to design critical structures...I see...pardon my obvious error in not perceiving this equality. I guess I was fooled by one's needing to ask a question and didn't realize that one "knew it all".

It was the question about how thick a ten-foot high wall should be, that threw me off. One would think that someone who knew "all" about cantilever retaining walls and how to build them would not need to ask such a basic question.

I'm sorry I intruded. Please, carry on.

this forum is full of argumentation. It seems most of you peaple want to sit back and b?tch about everything just to have an argument or prove a point.I did not say I knew it all. And yes, around here, allot of peaple who are out in the field do know allot more than some person who sits behind a desk and does not have the smarts to come out of the rain. Professional are just like trying to find a waterproofer. Everyone has there own way of thinking regardless if it is the right way or not.Buildings have collapsed and bridges have fallen because these proffesionals had miscalculated. I have been to TWO enginers and both gave a different thickness on the wall. One 10" and the other 12". I was just curios of what others thought. Opinions are free and everyone has one. Not to say that everyone who is a proffesional engineer is bad would be a long shot. Look how long it took before the towers fell, or look at the still standing arch in St. louis, or the Hoover Dam. I started this forum to find out what peaple are doing or seeing done in the field not to sit back and listen to some person argue about proffesional engineerse.

I am only building a small 1800 square ft, one floor house in the country not a superstructure. Yes, at times, a structual engineer needs to be brought in. But at the same time, they are only human and do not see the problems that others see who work hands on VS behind a desk.Since I gave examples, I guess I had better back them up. Tacoma Narrows Brige, Tacoma WA (design issue) / Hyatt Regency skywalk, Kansas City Mo (design issue)/ Therac-25(cancer irradiation device with software design failure with no safety promps)/Space Shuttle Challenger(O-ring design failure)/ West Gate Bridge, Melbourne Australia/ Patriot missle radar system used in operation Desert Shield (software design issue with death of several Marines)/USS Thresher Submarine (poor joint design)/Molasses tank failure, Boston MA/, I could go on. This country was built on trial and error. These failures I have listed have killed several peaple and the engineers were working on the projects. NOT TO SAY THERE IS A PLACE FOR EVERYONE OF THEM, and even though these failure of these structure caused loss of life I do think of the many more who still are alive today because of them. Why make such a big structual deal out of a simple question of watrproofing and wall thickness? I did not ask to get in a P?ssing match.

For every example given (and at least one of them is wrong: the Hyatt Regency filed because a series of steel connections were not built according to design drawings, but were changed to an inferior arrangement by the contractor), I'm sure there are thousands of big and small errors made by contractors who thought they were smarter than the designers. They just don't make the papers when they happen. All human beings make ewrrors.

Some of the "errors" cited were made by trail-blazing designers who ventured where no man had gone before, and their designs were in accordance with the best available knowledge at the time. Errors by contractors and builders are more often errors of ignorance of readily-available knowledge, or of arrogance, such as an "I know better" attitude.

Hyatt Regency sckywalk: Two level catwalk failed under live load, causing fatalities.Original DESIGN called for nuts where they could not actually be installed: original (impossible) DESIGN had each nut only helping to support the weight of one floor, the rod passing through the upper floor also passed the load of the lower floor through it, and not the nut holding up the upper floor. The installed DESIGN meant the nut under the upper floor not only had to support the weight of the upper floor but also the weight of the lower floor, the nut and rod were undersized to handle this load... Uper catwalk supported itself and lower catwalk, by means of rods offset from one another. Live load may have caused harmonic oscillation by dancing. Even the static load of peaple exceeded design.This load should have been figured in, Nuts tore through overload members and the structure failed.Being so defensive, you must be some kind of engineer, so I will go back to the origanal question since we can debate this forum for ever.(if you would like to answer), what kind of product would you use to waterproof a basement? How thick should a 10ft basement wall be?

Both original questions were answered. Probably, since it is a finished space inside the walls, a membrane waterproofing should be used. And the walls MAY, depending upon the suoerstructure of the building, have to be designed as cantilever retaining walls, which means probably a tapered vertical wall increasing in thickness toward the base, and an integral horizontal footing something like four feet wide, with reinforcing of the proper size and placement carefully installed in the wall. The finished wall will more than likely be an "L" with a tapered vertical. The horizontal leg may also need a key extending from the bottom to resist horizontal movement. The walls which extend beyond the actual foundation will definitely need to be cantilever retaining walls if they approach the same height.