Water Penetration

[bgball]

I have water penetration in my dining room. The house is a zero lot home and the lot behind me is higher than my house. There is a cement retaining wall (about half way up the brick wall) behind the house so there is no access to the brick wall. We presently have 2 feet of sheetrock removed due to mold and will be replacing it soon. Is there any product or procedure that we can use to waterproof the brick from the inside. We have installed sump pumps outside to reduce the amount of water that acculates in this area. They have kept the water out except when they fail.

[itumen]

Yes there is.
You can use hidraulic cements and plaster the wall from the inside.
Go to
http://www.sikaconstruction.com/con/con-dis.htm

and find some expert near you.

[spikingviking]

better late than never?

brick is tricky. the brick itself is probably very dense. its very likely that the water is penetrating through the grout/mortar lines.

in this case i would suggest a crystaline product such as BASF Tegraproof, Xypex, or Kryton T1. negative side is difficult because anything applied topically has the potential to be "blown off" by migrating moisture.
crystaline products contain chemicals that migrate into cemetitious surfaces and seek water. the idea is when those products come into contact with water, crystals form and plug the capillaries in the wall that allow water to pass. the crystals then continue to grow and "chase" the water, feeding on components in the cement, thus waterproofing the substrate. these crystaline products are applied topically and take time for the crystals to grow and work their way into the substrate.
i may be wrong, but these products work best on surfaces with decent percentages of portland cement. i think thier performance is limited on surfaces such as CMU (cinder block) because of the porosity of the block and the low portland cement content.
ultimately, once the product has worked its way into the surface, the topical coating could even be removed and the wall should still be waterproof from the product that has migrated into the wall.

alternately, there is always the costly option of injecting urethane grout or curtain grouting behind the brick wall, to try to plug the leaks by drilling through the brick or inserting a probe into the dirt outside and injecting a product such as Deneef HA Cut.

hope this helps

[Steve Scates]

Crystalline products will giove you the best result. I use a Kryton procedure you can get from Jeff taylor at Kryton. It works great on brick!