The cause of a damp garden wall is often a defective or missing seal. The permanent moisture causes lasting damage to the building structure, the plaster flakes off and the wall can become unstable. In this article you will find out what options you have to protect the floor and the top of the wall from this.
Garden walls should be sealed towards the ground
Seal the garden wall properly before construction
With a garden wall, both the foundation and the top of the wall should be protected from water ingress:
- Therefore, insert sealing material below the first row of stones. This prevents water from rising from the ground into the wall.
- In accordance with DIN 1053, a horizontal, slightly sloping wall edge above the top of the wall ensures that rain and melt water run off well and cannot press into the masonry from above.
seal foundation
Always build a foundation for the wall so that it does not stand on the natural ground. Otherwise, the moisture from the ground could rise into the masonry from below and be drawn upwards by capillary action.
A horizontal seal is also applied to the foundation, for example in the form of a bitumen membrane or special foil.
Cover the top of the wall professionally
Plastering offers no protection against the ingress of water. Therefore, the top of the wall must be covered with a suitable material.
- Zinc sheet is the simplest solution. In the case of walls that exceed a certain length, however, the sheets must be soft-soldered and thus connected to one another in a stable manner.
- Molded concrete or cast-in-place concrete of sufficient thickness works well as a cover. Make sure that the individual parts protrude far enough over the garden wall and are inclined enough for the water to run off.
- Granite is relatively expensive, but gives the wall a very noble finish. When applying, a good seal must be made with sealing slurry. If you would like to provide a natural stone wall with a granite finish, the cover should be laid with natural stone mortar on the crown and grouted elastically. Since these walls "work", it is ensured that the top of the wall lies solidly on the small structure.
tips
If you opt for bitumen cardboard to seal the wall against rising damp, it must be flamed. For this you need bitumen vapor barrier sheets and bitumen primer as well as a flame retardant, which you can borrow in many hardware stores.