Fuel Ghoul

Internal Gutter as Waterproofing Remedy for Wet Basement in Toronto

The real estate market in Toronto is red hot right now. It's a good time to sell investment property, esp residential houses, but not if the domicile has a wet basement.  If you want to sell a property in this city for top dollar, it must have a warm dry bottom layer.

After the 2013 record high rainfall levels for spring and summer months, most homes that have a freshly renovated basements now advertise that fact right under the For Sale sign on the front lawn.

Here's a house just north of Danforth and Broadview Ave in east Toronto that's getting waterproofing to cure condensation on the cement in the basement, and a little bit of runoff from the driveway during the spring melt. Its a beautoful home and having a wet basement could kill its market potential.

More details in this Bizcovering piece How a Waterproofing Company Fixes Wet Basement in Toronto From Inside House.  

Any kind of moisture can compromise framing, destroy carpeting, and ruin drywall, and make smelly crawl spaces. Some folks only use their basement for storage, but excessive condensation on cement walls can still buckle hardwood flooring above and invite mold and pests.

This job started by taking out the trash and cleaning up the modly insulation and drywall that was buried under paneling , and cleaning up the cement walls that flood every srping and fall.

The cinder blocks had to be drilled individually to puncture the cavities inside which can collect water.

It was through this window that all of the building supply materials were passed...

As you can see just below this window, the driveway is right beside the house, and the homeowner tried to put a bandaid on the problem by caulking the joint with the grey waterproof caulking; this is however little more than decporation, a ribbon of protection against the flash floods. When the ground is soaked from a week of rain, a summer storm can trigger a deluge.

In the case of this home, the driveway and lawn area, with a heavy clay soil, some of the water has nowhere to go.  It descends down the fissure at the side of the driveway above the basement region and so approximately 1500 square feet drains into this crevice and if you do that math that much square footage gathers 1,000 gallons of water for every inch of falling rain.

Wet basements flood according to the season in Toronto but for the most part there are five wet months: March, April, May and October, and November.

The standard procedure for drying out a wet basement is to first track down the source of the water. There are three main sources of basement flooding: condensation, run-off, subsurface seepage.

Ask how is the water flooding the basement?

Was the water in basement due to watershed run off? or from seepage (an underground water system which is by far the worst case scenario) or is the moisture due to condensation? Those are the three main ways in which moisture eneters the basement.

In this picture you can see the gravel on top of the special constructed filter hose that surrounds the plastic pipe. There is more about subterreanean landscaping on this Distillery Blog post which documents how waterlogged land can freeze and crack old brick walls in the downtown Toronto historic hotspot.

 

This homeowner in this case had runoff issues from the driveway above and so elected to have the local waterproofing company come into the home and dig an eight inch trench around the peremiter of the basement walls and then bury a perforated plastic pipe that's wrapped in this white plastic / polymer rubber hose filter. Then its all covered in gravel and finished*

Above this internal gutter to sump pump solution, a plastic membrane covers the wall and overlaps and ends at the gutter that has been dug below the wall.

To remedy all leaks and condensation, the solution would have to be tackled from the inside the house.

This is how you engineer a warm and dry basement.

Kitewing vs Kite Man; History of Men With Kites

Kitewing is a hand-held, lightweight wing that can provide propulsion to a man or woman harnessing the wind while wearing skates, or rollerblades or on a bicycle wheel cart called a dirtsurfer that is sometimes used to traverse sandy beaches and desert spaces.

Once known as the Skimbat, skiing or skating with a Kitewing is a popular method of harnessing wind for pure enjoyment

My friends just joined togther and bought a Kitewing from a dealer in Oshawa, and we're going to get another to race them. We're looking for a place to race my kitewing in the GTA and asking about for other local Kitewing owners on Toronto Forums. 

History of Kitewing

England 1893 ~ Captain B.F.S. Baden-Powell designed a stack of six large hexagonal kites for use in the Boer War in South Africa to lift soldiers into the air to observe the enemy. Captain Baden-Powell also did a series of tests using kites to carry messages from one ship to another.

United States 1915 ~ Samuel Perkins researched man-carrying kites for observational uses by the U.S. Army during World War I. He used kites that were nine to twelve feet high in trains of three to six. Perkins work never passed the trial stage.

But modern materials, and advanced aerodynamic engineering make this work today

Kitewing is safe and easy to use. It is simple in design and construction, yet it seems as though every detail has been carefully considered, tested,and refined. From set up to transport, to the way that the wind flows over the wing- all aspects have been carefully thought out. 

For example, the wing folds and travels easily in a lightweight ski bag. Owners can take it with them on ski trips to expand their downhill or frozen lake  options. Windy or icy conditions can wreck a mountain ski vacation, but with a kitewing, a wind blown lake or field becomes a playground. The best videos are of people using the toy at home, after work, or having races with buddies on a local field, cottage lake, or golf course.

Here is the Kitewing Instagram group which is a good place start to think about the history of this propulsion system / extreme sport.

Jean Paul Richter said “The test of an enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind” .

Erik Hopman is one of the foremost Kitewing pioneres

Kite Man is a comic book character, a supervillain in publications from DC Comics.

Kite Man first appeared in Batman vol. 1 #133 (August 1960), and was created by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang.

Kite Man is featured in Batman: The Brave and the Bold voiced by Jeffrey Combs. As a boy, he was obsessed with Benjamin Franklin and attempted to recreate his famous kite-flying electrical experiment. However, he failed to take adequate safety precautions, wore metal braces, and stood in a bucket of water. The subsequent electrical shock psychologically traumatized him and forced him into a life of kite-centric crime. In "Terror on Dinosaur Island," a flashback depicts him as the leader of a group of thieves equipped with high-tech glider kites that allows them to commit crimes.

In "Long Arm of the Law," Kite Man steals a sample of Plastic Man in order to complete a theta beam gun that will enable anyone to copy Plastic Man's powers, or petrify someone with elastic powers. He also obtains a sidekick named Rubberneck and gains stretching powers from theta beam exposure, and fights Batman and Plastic Man. However, he and Rubberneck are defeated when they are entangled together and the theta beam gun turns them to stone.

Kitewing is my superhero character. DIY crime fighter who patrols the streets and punishes thugs  

I went on Red Flag Deals and asked for kite wing like gadgets and propulsions systems a man or woman could buy that would tranform them into crime fighting superheroes

To the left is a snapshot of an extreme sport called power paragliding which looks quite controllable - this may soon be safe and efficient way to travel across rough country where there are no roads.