The best way to prevent such damage is to seal your concrete properly with an appropriate concrete sealer as soon as the concrete has finished curing. This will help limit the passage of water through the concrete, as well as densifying the material so it will not crack (which is the leading cause for leakages). However, if you have not sealed your concrete but you now are faced with water damage, there is still hope. All you need to do is follow the following steps in order to clean up the damage to your concrete and seal it properly to ensure that any future damage does not occur.
First, you must use a dry vacuum to remove all of the standing water. If the water incursion happens in your basement, for example, there is likely a large amount of standing water just sitting down there. That water cannot recede back through the concrete whence it came, so it instead will just sit down there until you are able to dry vac it out. Once this process is completed, you can begin the next step of sealing all the cracks with a hydrophobic crack repair kit. A hydrophobic crack repair kit will resist water, able to be applied to a damp concrete surface as non-hydrophobic crack fillers would not. The crack filler will repair any cracks in the concrete through which the water passed.
The concrete needs to be as dry as possible prior to sealing. If you think of concrete as a sponge it needs to be as dry as possible in order to absorp as much sealer as possible. Now that the water has been cleaned up and the cracks repaired, youre ready to properly seal the concrete. If you are sealing a surface that is primarily the more porous concrete blocks, you should choose the Siloxa-Tek 8500. The Siloxa-Tek 8500 will penetrate within the blocks while also providing a layer of surface protection, designed as it is to work with more porous material.
The Lithi-Tek 4500 primer and Siloxa-Tek 8500 topcoat, on the other hand, is an excellent combination that should only be used on poured concrete. The Lithi-Tek 4500 will penetrate within the concrete to react chemically, densifying the material and helping prevent any future cracks and subsequent disasters, while the Siloxa-Tek 8500 will provide a hydrophobic surface environment.
