Cement / waterproofing person

there is a lot to say about what happen to Jumping and as many of you know, i became a home inspector (at the advising of a customer) after decades of using my body as much as my brain. Since meeting with Jumping, i have transitioned into both a home inspector for buyers and a consultant for owners (it is a 50/50 split). As a consultant, i have been asked to manage projects for homeowners and i have project managed some things for a pair of commercial buildings in Brooklyn. But i am afraid to project manage for home owners because of three reasons: 1. homeowners will have unrealistic expectations of the project manager’s ability to control all facets of a job; and 2. a project manager cannot fix a bad contractor and would not want to be responsible for that; 3. I would want to be on site a lot when jobs are being done and it costs a lot of money to have me standing around looking while doing nothing else (some of these contractors have to be watched; they switch materials, they do not let product cure or dry long enough before going over it with something else; ….. the list goes on and the problems they cause sometimes do not show up for years).

many people have asked me for the names of contractors after i do investigative work in their buildings and i simply shrug my shoulders and say i really cannot recommend anyone. i am afraid to because I know there are a lot people out there marketing themselves as contractors when they cannot even paint a wall (and that is where all of us who worked in this with our hands began; learning about primers and painting the wall and picking up trash on a job; we now have people running companies who cannot tell me the bases of three primers we most often run into when painting in houses; oil, water, alcohol; my mother is the person who taught me those when i was a young teen).

beginning in early 2025, people began asking me to investigate technical aspects of roofing products and compatibility with other products and in one case, in front of a customer, i got a technical sales manager for a roofing supply company (chris at karnaack, he is based in indiana and can explain anything to any of you) on the phone and acted as the go-between between the customer and the person at the roofing manufacturer and i posed the questions so he understood them and then converted them back to english for my customer. since then, i have been reviewing construction documents for homeowners and either raising questions or telling them to add things to contracts. I can promise you this, when i worked in commercial buildings, the contracts were twice as thick because we demanded details. these contractors working for homeowners leave so much basic stuff out. But by doing this, i am able to provide a needed service – and perhaps weed a couple of contractors out of the running simply by asking a question they do not want to answer or cannot answer – without assuming too much liability on myself for the outcome.

there is one thing i will tell everyone here: when i pick up the phone to talk to a contractor i do not know, i know in the first five minutes if that person has what it takes to get through a job. Just simply having a conversation and asking some questions allows us to understand how dedicated the contractor is to what they do and how much experience they have and if they will try to bs us (that contractor Jumping called would not have passed muster). btw, ladies, i had a conversation with my mom about this (in the year before she passed away, she died in July and some may know that i went to her a lot asking her about issues she faced working in this industry). I asked her about how she dealt with male contractors who treated her different as a female and she told me this “it was hard at first but in time i learned to spot it right away by asking them questions during the first call, if they could not talk to me and accept those questions from me (as a woman), the conversation went no further”.

in so far as the challenges the op faces here, i have been doing some thinking (both technically, keeping water out of a slab that may be too thin to add a water proofing membrane to and how to deal with contractors; i am going to have a conversation with someone). I had met op and her husband at a brownstoner meet up a few years back and she has since consulted with me on something so sooner or later she is going to pick the phone up and call me or i am going to call her.

i am currently looking to join IIBEC (International Institute of Building Envelope Consultants) and become certified as a Water Proofing Consultant and this will require some additional education and i may tailor some of that around porch projects such as these because the need is there and the local contractors alone do not have the training.

I have just survived a total masonry porch replacement project at my home. I know Steve Cymbalski from the forum and he did a homeowner directed house inspection in anticipation of this work. I wanted his opinion of the situation. Of course we came across a whole other host of issues concerning a homeowner’s worst enemy- water. Steve confirmed that this was a shituation and it needed attention.
To get the project started was tricky because it was small potatoes to every professional in town- especially being off the beaten path in Windsor Terrace/Kensington border. Finding an engineer that had not been convicted of a felony or was going to charge me $700 just to come over and take a look was incredibly difficult too. Though a construction company, I found an engineer, who I liked, and who I thought was going to be a good leader for this project. In the end, I did use this referring construction company, but it was really a process of elimination. I was under the gun of having a brick wall falling over and It was the near the end of the season to accomplish exterior work. These pressures made me move forward because I was desperate to get it the job done. The engineer brought six companies into bid on the project. We only ended up with two with actual bids and the second one’s math was wrong. Some dropped out because of the schedule, some because the job was too small. I should have had the sense to say that we have to wait until next season and find the right team. It turned into a poor experience with the contractor. I really needed someone who was on my side and looking out for my interests. I hear Steve is now vetting contractors for people, and I genuinely wish that had been available to me last year.

i would say if you looked at contractors working on larger projects in manhattan, you will find contractors who understand the problem and can specify the work to be done. There are companies with these names: Grenadier, Maspeth Roofing (and they work on mortar around the roof line and a concrete or stone porch equates to that) and Niche. the problem with these companies is, they do not want to have to compete in the highly competitive residential market where small jobs bring small rewards. most of them work on bigger projects on big coops and condos and commercial buildings in manhattan. I know for a fact that Grenadier will NOT work on residential because i called them a year ago. Maspeth might but might also have trouble with the size of the project. And niche also only seems interested in slightly larger projects, maybe a big coop in an outer boro is ok. I would consider these “waterproofing contractors” and they work on both sides of the line between roofs and nearby masonry and porches and walls (building envelope contractors).

I am now working with a company that one of my customers found and whom i have passed around to several other customers and they really like him. i have spoken to him on the phone about some of these projects and he is open to conversation and exchange of ideas which is probably why people like him. he might be the kind of person who could get through this. he has been trying to meet me in person and i am going to talk to him about water issues not just around roof lines but with masonry porches. i might come back here with his name if it sounds like he either really has an understanding or at least is willing to do research and present several ideas and solutions to a customer and help the customer pick a solution (this happens a lot in professional real estate, we have to know enough to pick from several solutions if there is no one contractor saying “this is it and i guarantee it” and most times, none can say that).

when i do home inspections and the front of a brownstone has the steps going up and water leaching in below and creating a musty situation, i often find myself saying to people that it is going to be difficult to do anything about it and NOT to seal underneath because that will trap moisture which will be driven in by the warm sun hitting the steps and then when it freezes, it will damage the stone. concrete and some other stones equally as porous.

something tells me that your porch might have some steel in it and this introduces another element and another problem. the steel expands as it rusts and that further causes problems by cracking the masonry.

Read about positive side water proofing before you listen to a contractor so you understand the challenges that one will face. Also, understand that there is no such thing as water proof concrete though 4500 psi concrete comes close.

Do not start putting paints or plastic like sealants down but look into silicone and see if you might have a joint that along the front of the house or other places where things change direction and see if it is possible that a sika flex sealant could close a joint.

Also, it is better that you figure most of this out before relying on a contractor who may understand less about the science behind this. It helps to understand how moisture moves through materials and what impact temperature can have on movement. Thermal imaging and moisture meters can help and of course i carry those in my bag of tricks.