Masonry Magazine March 2006 Page. 45
FLASHING & DRAINAGE
There are so many residential projects that don't have flashing and don't have weep vents.
"They have so many problems in the Midwest right now, whether it's Indiana, Kentucky or Illinois. There are so many masonry problems right now, where homebuilders have a development they've done with 15 or 20 houses in it, and all the masonry has to come back off. It's not properly detailed.
"I think residential is ready to step up and do a better job with it all. They are trying much harder to get their details correct, but they have a lot more quantity.
"When it comes to cavity walls, we sell a mortar deflection product that will handle any thickness of cavity wall. We have a product that is hinged at the bottom so that it doesn't put any pressure on the outer wall. Certain products are sized to be thicker than the cavity, so they have to be stuffed inside. That extra thick material, especially in a cavity that varies in thickness, can cause masonry issues.
"The mortar deflection is just one of four products we sell for masonry drainage. We sell mortar deflection; we sell a product for full-wall rain screen; we sell a system for venting walls, which we call vent strips; and we sell weep vents. So there are four different pieces to the DRIWALL masonry product line."
Cosella Dörken
"DELTA MASONRY BARRIER is going into the bottom part of the wall, typically right in between the concrete floor and the masonry wall that's built on top," said Marcus Jablonka, plant manager of Cosella Dörken. "These products are waterproof materials that prevent the masonry wall or concrete foundation wall from sucking water through the capillary action, right into the block of the concrete. If you just imagine the concrete is always going to be exposed to water or to vapor from below, so it will have a certain humidity content.
"The masonry wall has little pores, and with those pores you will have a lot of capillaries, which basically suck up the water; that can be up to knee-high. You don't want that, because there's no way you can stop it afterwards, there's nothing you can apply on the outside. So that masonry barrier has to be installed right before the first masonry block goes on the concrete.
"If you look at the U.S. in areas where more masonry is being used - I can't tell you a percentage - but there are very few who use masonry barriers. There's no other way to prevent the capillary action from functioning unless you put a barrier in between. And people do that, and the effect is very known. A lot of good or better construction, vapor barriers are being used below the concrete slab. It would be exactly for the same purpose: to prevent humidity from weeping into the concrete. If you do that, you should do it with your wall as well, otherwise your wall will get wet.
"I think sometimes we just don't think about what's going on below grade. We think water is only coming out of the sky and we have to take care of our roof, and our sidewalls, and our gutters and whatnot, and then we don't think about what's going on with the foundation or the basement anymore. Water can actually come from all directions. Pretty much everybody knows that we should always take care of surface water and get it as far away from the house as we can. But we still need a functioning drainage system along the base of the wall, and we also need to make sure that the house is not affected by water from below."
MortarNet
THIS SUMMER, MortarNet will introduce Total Flash, a five-foot long, all-in-one product that includes the ter-
RETROFIT WEEP HOLE COVER™
For existing (retrofit) construction
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