Water Proofing

I went to a friend’s house recently and he told me that there is a water leak from the 1st floor bathroom in to the concrete slab and people who come to repair this is asking for huge some of money telling that they need to break the tiles and remove the bathroom fittings to water proof the concrete to fix this problem. He was asking me weather aren’t there any other affordable solution for this without removing the tiles.
When I asked him why dint you did the water proofing before you fix the tiles to the bathroom, his answer was that he didn’t do it because he had heard that water doesn’t leak through the concrete .
This is a common problem which lot of people have face when they haven’t water proofed their concrete of the bathroom floors when they build their multi storied houses.
The solution what I proposed him was to remove the plaster of the concrete slab from which water leaks out and to apply the chemical “PENETRON”. This chemical squeeze in to the micro gaps in the concrete and gets crystallized, preventing water leaking out.
Then his doubt was weather once “PENETRON” is applied and the water leak is sealed, weather it will come out from a another area of the concrete slab or when water gets trapped within the concrete slab weather the iron rods of the slab will get corroded .I told him that it will not happen & then I explained him about how this chemical “PENETRON” reacts with the concrete and water proof it using the video given below.

Using sand for construction purposes.

Once I wanted to buy some sand for a repair of my house, went to few hardware stores but couldn’t get the appropriate sand which is suitable for constructions. At one place the had a muddy sand which they were recommending that it is the most high quality & appropriate sand for constructing which is brought from “Daduru Oya”. But with my experience I knew that it’s not suitable.
There was an known mason and he too was recommending that even he used this sand to build his own house and that’s the most high quality sand that I ever can find hence its River sand.
What I am trying to point out from this incident is that there are various opinions about using sand for construction’s which differs from one another, some are true &some are false.
As an example even some of the senior engineers recommend that using sea sand for construction’s is not suitable due to the salt content in it, but according to the experiment’s done by department of civil engineering of Moratuwa University they have proved that using sea sand Is a very best substitute for river sand and it doesn’t make any bad effect on the durability of the building. In a way it’s environmentally friendly as well.
Lot of people are using muddy sand telling that its river sand but since it contains a certain percentage of mud it’s not suitable for constructions.
Even there are some false statements about measuring the capacity of sand, normally we measure sand using the unit “Cube” which is equal to 100 cubic feet’s, most of the sand dealers say that once the deck of a small lorry is completely filled with sand it’s a cube, but it doesn’t contain exactly a cube, lot of consumers doesn’t know about this. To calculate the real capacity what you have to do is multiply the length of the deck by the breath & the height of it. (Length x breath x height = volume of the deck).

Introduction

Every one of us has a desire to build our own house. But the most common problem people has to face is lack of technical knowledge & the method of building a proper house according to vasthu .this is a complex subject which is expanded in a Vass area and bit complicated as well, my objective is to explain this complex subject in a understandable simple way in which even a person who is not aware of anything about these things would understand about it .
If you have any doubts or questions regarding housing constructions please feel free to ask your questions
Would appreciate your comments for the further development of this blog.