Hi all,

I have bad looking water marks on my living hall wall.

Why? I have a few speculations:

1) My next door neighbor, which is separated by the affected wall, actually has the house on a higher level than mine, because the row of houses sits on a slight slope. Perhaps on the other side of the wall, it is actually facing soil, especially lower portion of the wall. Could it be the soil?

2) I also hacked the same wall to put aircond piping. The water marks are also appearing at roughly the same area where the piping is, for now. Could it be the aircond?

3) The house is really empty though, I have turned on the aircond probably less than 10 times. Initially I did see the marks and decided to scrape and repaint it. That was two months ago and I haven't turned on my aircond since. However after two months the paint degraded anyway as per the two pictures. Could it be that when the wall was hacked, the cement job to patch it up is probably not up to par (allows moisture to easily seep thru), causing the water marks?

How do I fix this? Any ideas?

Water mark could be due to water from neighbouring soil that seeps through the wall or water from soil below that rises through capilliary action.
This normally happens when no polythene sheet laid below concrete slab during construction.
One way to solve it is to install wall tile from floor until maximum height of water mark.

Is there a way that doesn't involve tiling the wall... looks really weird at the living hall.

My contractor suggested something similar - put marble tiles... but I would prefer to still have a painted wall.

Is there a way to waterproof the wall?

put waterproof as a base layer. then undercoat and paint it.

whereabout? how much higher is ur neightbout house

Do you know the history of this house? I may be wrong but from what I saw, this could be the after effect of termite's track. Maybe some sort of a chemical trail left behind that is causing it. Why I know? Because I'm also facing the same problem.

My unit had termites infestation before, we managed to rid the problem by renovating entire house, removed all wooden structure from wardrobe, kitchen cabinet, tiles and door frames, in short we stripped the unit bare, all that was left were the existing aluminum window frame. (You can click my link below to view my previous reno progress)

After repainted whole house, I noticed this "bubbling" effect appearing few months later and it only appeared along termites tracks.

Scrapped off affected area, repainted it but only to have it come back 2 months later. Results only improved after 3rd or 4th attempt.

This post has been edited by Xccess: Dec 4 2013, 12:34 AM

I think you are confusing the word SOLVE with the phrase "cover it up"

Tiling over will not solve the problem, it will only temporarily cover it up.


It looks to me like "rising damp" which can be caused by a few problems, such as (a) missing or incomplete/incorrect waterproofing of the foundation and lower course of bricks (b) soil stacked above the waterproof level of foundation and lower bricks © termite tracks which can have capillary action to suck water up.

cheers

Know what behind the wall? Your neighbor living room, open area or toilet?

You can check with your neighbor.

If the wall feel cold and damp, mean there are water present. Best put a piece of tissue on the wall and see if it damp.

This is a very common problem. There are plenty of water. It is not termite. It is the other way round. Water attract termite.

You cannot get rid of the water as you do not know where the source of water from. If no new source of water present then it will dry soon and the problem solved by itself due to capillary action and evaporation.

If it is due to when no polythene sheet laid below concrete slab then it should happen to all areas and not only the isolated areas.

The easy and cost effective way is to waterproof the wall up to 1 foot above the highest water mark. When the source of water is continue feeding that area and if you only waterproof up to the problem areas then new patches will appear above the waterproof areas as by nature accumulative water need cycle. meaning it has to go somewhere by capillary action and evaporation. By waterproofing higher hopefully instead of water getting up higher it goes else where by gravity like to your neighbor soil and find a way out somewhere else. Gravity is your friend, so waterproof higher and do the job once.

This post has been edited by stevie8: Dec 4 2013, 01:28 AM

gravity is our friend, nice post !!

Capillary action can defy gravity what?

This is what I'm thinking as well. So it means:

1) Hack the wall again, going for area larger than existing patch
2) Waterproof it. Does this mean it's the same waterproof cement / liquid used to waterproof the toilet floor? Does it work in this case, especially when applied vertically?
3) Full paint job (undercoat paint etc etc)

Behind the wall is supposedly my neighbor's living hall. I don't think it's an issue from his side (apart from his house being slightly higher than mine, due to the slope).

This post has been edited by boyan: Dec 4 2013, 11:25 PM

About 1 foot higher.

When I think about this issue further, I believe it's

1) Due to the hacking done for aircond piping
2) But not really due to the aircond piping leaking (I didn't turn it on for two months)
3) The cement job to cover up the piping is 'bad', and probably the wall is not 'finished' properly, causing water and water marks to spread through the covered-up area.

This is because, the house was vacant for a good 3-4 months before I hacked the wall for aircond piping. No water marks on the wall!

Here's some more pictures on the hacking done, the pipe, and the cement job. Please do let me know if you see anything amiss.

Basically the piping channels water out of the aircond in the living hall to the grassy patch outside of the house.

Here's the hacked wall.



It then goes out of the house, draining out onto the grassy patch.



Here's a closeup of the piping. Some temporary cement to hold the piping in place, before the actual cement job to cover it up.





Here is a picture of the hacked wall being covered up. At this time, it's still the original paint. Note how you don't see watermarks anywhere else, as of yet.



And here is the wall, skim-coated before the current paint layer, which is now being plagued with water marks... urgh...



Comments?

This post has been edited by boyan: Dec 5 2013, 12:04 AM

evaporating effect from the pipe inside ur wall..

could you check if the wall is cold.

i think is just long term condensation as the pipe carried water of lower temperature.

I probably need to re-experiment again, as I last scraped, repainted and turned off the aircond two months ago.

In any case, if it's due to the aircond piping, it seems like I shouldn't be doing it in the first place - but I'm pretty sure there are others who have done the same piping in the wall, and they don't have this issue.

Where might have it gone wrong?

There might be a possibility that water is flowing FROM the ground (if it isn't due to the aircond prob…).

To prevent this you have to use sealer before painting on your wall. However, if the source of water doesn't stop, the problem will eventually reappear however good your sealer is.

I heard that Colourland Paints has recently launched a water based sealer (Elastoseal & Elastokote). As it's water-based, water inside the wall can come out. And it is a sealer at the same time so water outside CAN'T go in.
I think it might be a good solution in your case.

waterproof cement is available. the susu type cant be apply vertically iinm.
u can use waterproof paint and another layer of undercoat on top

i think it is related to ur aircond piping.mine have the same problem too but mine not so serious as maybe it is deeper.