Reabilitarea construcțiilor

Water damages in walls

Most of us think of walls as backgrounds, but water damage makes them all too noticeable. Fortunately, water damage often looks more serious than it is. Short-term exposure to water won't harm most building materials, but water quickly damages plaster and drywall. You can usually prevent permanent water damage on walls, however, if you act promptly.

Finding the Source

Sometimes the source of water damage is obvious, such as an overflowing tub or gaps around a window. Other times it takes detective work to find the source. For example, roof leaks can be difficult to trace because the water doesn't always appear immediately below the leak. Many roof leaks first appear around ceiling light fixtures, so if you have this type of water damage in your home, check the roof. Roof leaks are usually localized and the source of the problem is often an intersection of two distinct parts of the roof—such as the edge of a dormer—or under flashing. Water running along framing members or vapor barriers that block water drainage may be to blame.

Leaks in plumbing inside the walls also are difficult to trace. You might find it helpful to hire a service that does infrared leak detection, or to rent an infrared detector and do it yourself.

When rehabilitating masonry structural systems, the following aspects must be taken into account:

i. the age of the building;

ii. ii. the masonry type; • stone • brick

iii. iii. the type of the join(t)ing material between the masonry stone • dry masonry • loam or lime mortar • cement mortar

iv. iv. the structural system:

• plain masonry

• masonry with metallic elements

• masonry with reinforced concrete columns and belts

v. the foundation type

Excluding the design and execution errors as a cause of masonry structure degradation, the main causes are:

• material aging

• the lack of building maintenance and the occurrence of condensation, which lead to the degradation of the materials used in the structural system;

• foundation soil degradation due to rain water infiltration, leakage from supply or sewage installations, rise in ground-water level or their course deviation because of new construction; • exceeding the bearing capacity of the foundation soil when building a new construction which is adjacent to an already existing construction;

• seismic action; • other extraordinary actions like explosions