Testing Basement Floor For Moisture

Concrete slabs are naturally breathing elements of a home readily taking in moisture and air expanding and contracting and shifting with nature.

Testing basement floor for moisture.

Seal around the edges and leave it for several days. If you get moisture on the exposed surface then the problem is condensation. For those slabs with a pre existing floor covering an extra step is involved to test for moisture. The floor covering must be removed.

Moisture meters include visual led indicators related to the percent reading on the scale for dry moderate and saturated or wet readings. This page briefly describes moisture sources moisture movement mechanisms and typical basement moisture problems. Standing water on floor. How and why water comes up from the basement floor can vary so investigative work is needed before panicking.

A third option a simple diy test can indicate the presence of excess moisture either on the slab surface or in the room s air but it cannot measure. Water trickling out of walls. This is a relative scale. It is not however the best test if you are planning to put an epoxy coating on the floor.

Then a step by step process for addressing each problem is presented along with several detailed approaches to solving the problem. If there are any mortars grouts or adhesives they must be removed and ground down to expose a clean section of concrete. This is a low cost low tech moisture test that can be useful for determining if you have moisture in a garage or basement floor. Plastic sheet moisture test.

To test your basement for moisture tape a piece of plastic or tin foil onto the basement floor. Few scenes put fear into homeowners like spotting water on the basement floor for the first time and rightly so too because this can be a sign of bigger problems and must be taken seriously. Flooring manufacturers rate their products based on the moisture levels they can tolerate and testing your slab can tell you if a particular flooring material is likely to perform adequately. However if you have moisture under.

A second direct test astm f 1869 standard test method for measuring moisture vapor emission rate of concrete subfloor using anhydrous calcium chloride was standardized in the 1990s by the subcommittee on practices of the committee on resilient floor coverings. How to test a concrete floor for excessive moisture.