Stable build/general building question

[Ranyhyn]

We have recently had a block of stables installed. Wood building on concrete fitted on to a brick course (2 bricks high)

Stables built with back to the prevailing weather direction.

I have noticed water is getting IN to my stable from the rear, I think by hitting the rear wooden walls, dripping down and coming under the woodwork and then coming down my brickwork.

Any suggestions on how to remedy this and/or other theories?

 

[PurBee]

I had/have this issue. If the wooden walls are sitting on the course of bricks and not overlapping the course of bricks the rain will hit the bricks and seep in underneath the wooden paneling. As the back is the side of the prevailing winds, then rain will be driven into that gap easier by the wind too.
You could put a 45 degree layer of concrete against the wood wall to meet the edge of the brickwork to encourage rain to drip off. You’d want to seal the edge where the concrete meets the wooden wall with an exterior sealant/caulk once the concrete is dry as it’s likely to shrink a bit upon drying leaving a tiny gap between your concrete 45 degree ‘sill’ and the wooden wall.
Or you could affix a length of wood at a 45 degree angle from the wooden wall to the edge of the course of bricks...to act like a drip-sill. Again seal/caulk with a good sealant the top edge of the wooden sill where it meets the wood wall to prevent water sitting in the tiny gap, over time, standing water on wood will rot it. Put in enough sealant so that you don’t have an edge for water to sit in.

On one side of my barn I didn’t do this, and the bottom of the wall wood has taken 7yrs to finally rot away! As yours is newly built it’s worth doing it straight away.

 

[Ranyhyn]

Got it, although the building does not sit flush against the edge of the bricks (there is a lip so you'd THINK the water would drip directly off) its still tracking back and in.

Great suggestions both of them, it is well worth getting it sorted now - I certainly would be very upset if my building only lasted 7 years and plus, I'm going through bedding like billy-o.

I am suprirsed the contractors didnt warn me of this, I was building from new so I could have put anything in, in order to save this from happening!

 

[PurBee]

With the gushing and swirling wind driving against that back wall while raining it can easily cause water to ‘defy gravity’!
Also there’s the action of ‘capillary attraction’ where water on any drip-edge can be pulled back by the dry wood behind that drip edge.
When you consider that coupled with wind blowing against it, you’ll get ingress of water.

Window sills on houses these days generally have a cut groove underneath the sill about an inch in from the edge...it’s called a drip edge to encourage water to settle into that groove and drip off and not just run backwards into the wall.
When I was a decorator in another life I repaired many old rotten sills that didn’t have the drip-groove cut in.

So if your wooden walls are overlapping the brick course, depending on the size of the gap between the two, if small maybe you could use sealant on it’s own, or if it’s 10mm or more you could have another strip of wood fitted up into the gap and fixed flush against the wall. Use sealant where they join.
Regarding external sealant, use a good make, as many shrink when dry requiring a second application.
Here’s a good one that can be applied to damp wood/wet conditions:

https://www.screwfix.com/p/geocel-the-works-sealant-adhesive-black-290ml/66022

It’s weird that you’re getting so much water come in even considering the above. Maybe something else is allowing water to flow in if your noticing bedding getting drenched.
How deep is your concrete base that the bricks are sat on? Are the bricks flush with the edge of the base?
Maybe water is coming in between the bottom of the brick course and concrete base? Concrete does shrink upon drying so it’s possible. The remedy is external sealant against that join if so.

Another thing to consider is the guttering. I don’t know the design of your building but just check that the edge of the roof does meet the gutter good enough to ensure all water from the roof is definitely ending up in the gutter and not dripping down your wall. Ideally the roof lip wants to meet the middle of the gutter. If the roof has no overhang from the walls then sometimes the edge of the roof is only just lined up with the edge of the gutter, and in windy conditions can cause the roof water to miss the gutter drip/run down the wall.

 

[Ranyhyn]

Wow thank you so much For taking the time to write that. I’ll try to grab a photo, I am pretty sure the brick course to base is watertight becausE it was holding water before the doorways were cut out. I can actually see where the bricks are wet once it’s rained!

 

[PurBee]

A picture would be helpful. I was going to ask if you had noticed the brickwork on the inside wet from the top bricks down to floor level. If you could take a photo outside where the wood wall meets the brickwork, eye level to top of bricks would show the gap well and how best to counteract the problem.
I’ve encountered rain issues a lot living in west Ireland renovating this place, it’s amazing how water can wick into buildings.

 

[Ranyhyn]

Please see attached some photos

After you saying about the Slab were also concerned maybe it’s seeping up!

 

[Ranyhyn]

Inside

 

[Ranyhyn]

There does appear to be a notch like you mentioned

 

[PurBee]

The pictures really help, as they say, a picture says a thousand words!

Maybe others will chip in with their experiences and suggestions - your pictures suggest to me that the water is seeping through the line between the brickwork and the concrete floor slab.
The pic showing inside shows the bottom row of bricks drenched, and looks to be wicking up.
The outside concrete slab step is horizontal and holding water and already starting to go green with algae/moss...giving a clue that its holding water and could be seeping in from that ledge.

Concrete isnt waterproof, so unless your builders used a plasticiser in their trowel mix it could easily seep in and through....constantly dripping in...with you having bedding against that also is another material to wick the moisture through.

Also, your course of bricks are concrete bricks, not clay bricks. Theyre not waterproof, unlike clay bricks.

I rented a place that had a steel shed mounted onto a course of concrete blocks on a concrete floor slab, just like your stable, and after a downpour there was a puddle inside on the floor. It also was seeping in between the blockwork and the floor.
To make concrete waterproof a plasticiser agent is mixed in with the concrete.

What needs doing to remedy it is to have the blocks rendered, with a plasticiser mixed into the render, and the render needs to be trowelled down curving on to the ledge of the concrete base, and continued on over that ledge, creating a sloped ledge to drip off to the outside. Level ledges of concrete floors surrounding any building are a recipe for disaster to allow water to sit and seep in.
Rendering will stop any moisture getting in through that grey blockwork.

However, what really concerns me is that outside, the grade of the grassland to the side of the building is level at the corner of the building with your concrete floor base. It then slopes away towards where youre taking the photo from.
Was a DPM (damp-proof membrane- very thick layer of plastic) put down under your concrete floor base?
When the area was scraped to pour the concrete base, what was the base made of? Did they hit clay?

I see a length of timber fixed to the side of the concrete base on the outside....im wondering if that is there holding up the dpm?

If you answer the above questions itll help assess whether water is actually also coming in via the surrounding soil, flowing inbetween the DPM and your concrete base, wicking up and giving you a generally damp concrete floor throughout your building.

If you had contractors in to do this, i would be very unhappy. They should be professionals and know the basic rules of laying a concrete base, and landscaping the surrounding land so that water flows away from the building on all sides not up against the building.
Sometimes its not possible to landscape a slope on all sides of a building so a drain is dug, piped and filled with gravel.
Your concrete base is butted up to and into a soil ledge in that far corner....the water seeps into the soil, onto the ledge and into the building aswell as possibly seeping between a DPM Layer and concrete base.

As builders they should remedy all and any problems.
I suspect youre needing the stables for use, but it would be ideal to remove everything off the concrete floor inside for a few weeks, see how dry it is overall the floor area, (is the floor light grey and dry to touch or is it darker and damp all the time) wait for some episodes of lashing rain weather and see if the entire floor gets damp and where water pools.
Take video footage and photos to show the builders.

You dont want overall damp in your building as itll just encourage mould, which with horses, we all know is not what we want in their stable!

We get metres of rain here, its very damp much of the time with humidity rarely below 90 in the winter months, but im thankful that the stable we built has a dry floor and is very dry within, despite our initial mistake of the bottom of the wall allowing moisture in, the concrete pad had to be landscaped, drains on 2 sides...rain no longer flows toward the building.
The landscaping is very important to help keep any building dry within.
We were in a rush doing ours as we had a mare and foal suddenly in our laps needing shelter so werent thinking things through slowly and carefully!

Let me know about the dpm layer and what the substrate was made of before the concrete floor block was poured.

 

[cundlegreen]

i"ve never had anything like that despite water pouring down onto the concrete pad with heavy rain., and having very wet land, and a high water table. My stables are bolted onto two layers of brick with a damp proof mesh fitted between. Your blocks look more like interior blocks. I've never seen those used under a wooden base. Good luck with sorting it.

 

[Ranyhyn]

The base Is 15+years old, I really doubt there was Damp proof membrane used (there is an odd paint on it though, maybe damp proof paint?)
Thanks for the advice with the rendering that seems sensible.

A contractor friend suggested he has like a “plastic” paint which sets hard which he could -have you heard of this and it is a good option? Or will rendering it be the best?

 

[PurBee]

Dpm’s have been used for many decades now, so you might have one.

The plastic paint is a good idea. As your concrete blocks arent too ‘holey and porous’ the paint should fill all the small pock holes they have.
Initially before painting, i would still use the sealant i mentioned on the underneath tiny gap where the wooden wall meets the brickwork....get a good load of it in there to really seal up that gap.
The notch that is there underneath the wooden wall is a groove for the next wooden shiplap boarding to be slid into, rather than it being a conventional ‘drip edge’.
If it were mine i would seal a line of sealant into that deep groove, leaving it just slightly indented to act like a drip edge, as i wouldnt want water to repeatedly be driven into that deep groove, without drying out, with potential over time to rot it.

Id also seal where the blocks meet the concrete base....a massive line of sealant to completely cover the concrete trowel line.
Allow the sealant to fully dry before applying the paint...as a plastic paint might interact with ingredients in the sealant preventing full curing of the sealant.
As its outside, depending on the nature of the paint. I would use 2 coats of paint.
Generally ‘milking parlour paint’ is a rubbery plastic paint, and having used that commercially in the past i was surprised how thin the paint was, and applied 3 coats to get a really solid, inpenetrable waterproof surface...an extra coat because it was going to be daily pressure-sprayed.

It would be best to apply the paint onto the blocks and the horizontal section of your concrete base, its up to you if you do the verticle edge of your base, i would personally do it all to ground level, that way you know for sure youve waterproofed all possible areas where water could seep through.

If you have a water issue after this, then it suggests its seeping in due to the grading of the ground around the stable, but dont go there unless you have to. Its easier and cheaper to seal and paint the walls to be fully waterproofed, which needs doing anyway, and see if that fully resolves the issue.

 

[PurBee]

Painting in winter temperatures can really slow drying time, there’s a product known as ‘paint driers’, you wont find it in doitall but will get it from a dulux centre. That can be used to speed up drying, its mixed in the paint. Just a capful.
You dont want rain from the 3 days after its painted...or temps below 5 degrees are really too cold to set the paint well and allow it to ‘bond’ well.

Ive used a gas portable heat gun/blow torch to help speed up and bond paint drying in winter. Every hour or so rapidly wave the flame 10 inches across the paint surface. Ask your contractor if they could do this. Itll really help speed drying.

 

[Ranyhyn]

Thank you so much, taking Your time to reply is so appreciated.

FIL has given me some German paint called wasser drichtBy wenko heard of it?

 

[PurBee]

Wenko ive heard of but not used.
German paint is generally excellent, and italian!
I guess the instructions on the can are in german...is it oil based or water based do you know?

 

[Ranyhyn]

Youre right, there's not a bit of english on the entire tin! I can google translate most of it and have a look!

 

[Darbs]

Get the contractors back.