Residential Waterproofing Services Los Angeles

Prevention is always cheaper than repair.

Waterproofing is the least glamorous line on any estimate, and the first corner a cheap bid quietly cuts. Once the tile is set and the deck is coated you cannot see it, which makes it easy to skip and easy to fake. Then it fails. Not this year, but years down the line, when the framing under a shower has gone soft or a balcony has been feeding water into the ceiling below the whole time. By then it's not a waterproofing job anymore. It's a demolition and a rebuild. We treat it as its own trade, because it is one. Here's how we handle waterproofing in Los Angeles, area by area. Showers are where most bathrooms fail, and where the failure is the most preventable. The old LA standard was a hot-mopped pan, hot asphalt layered in by feel. Done well it works. Done fast, you find out years later. We build showers with Schluter Kerdi membrane instead: the pan, curb, walls, niche, and bench all get a bonded sheet membrane, with every corner and pipe penetration sealed. Then we flood-test the pan for 24 hours before a single tile goes down. If it holds water in a test, it holds water for the life of the bathroom. Tile over a bad pan and you won't know until the ceiling below starts staining. Decks and balconies over a living space are the highest-stakes waterproofing on the property. When a deck coating fails, the water doesn't sit on the surface. It runs into the framing, rots the joists, and comes through the ceiling of the room underneath. Fixing it means tearing the whole deck off and rebuilding what it ruined on the way down. We use traffic-rated coating systems from Westcoat and similar manufacturers, built for foot traffic, UV, and the way an LA surface bakes all summer and then soaks in a January storm. These fail at the flashing where the deck meets doors and walls, so that's where we spend the time. Foundations and below-grade rooms are a soil problem before they're a water problem. LA sits on clay that swells when it's wet and shrinks when it dries, and it leans on anything below grade. Exterior foundation waterproofing means excavating the wall, applying a membrane, hanging drainage board so water can't sit against the concrete, and running a French drain at the footing to carry it off. For wine cellars, basements, and finished lower levels we add dimple-board drainage layers, a sump pump where water has no way out by gravity, and dehumidification so the space stays dry enough to actually use. Hillside drainage is its own discipline in this city. LA doesn't rain often, but when it does it comes down hard and all at once, and a hillside lot funnels every bit of it toward the house. Retaining walls fail when water stacks up behind them with nowhere to go, so we backfill with perforated pipe, filter fabric, and gravel to keep that pressure off the wall. French drains, area drains, and honest grading send the runoff around the house and into the storm system instead of down the foundation. None of this shows up in a listing photo. It's the least glamorous work we do and, most weeks, the most important. If you're building a shower, recoating a deck, or trying to keep a hillside out of your basement, we'll walk it with you and tell you straight what it actually needs. Getting this right has always been cheaper than any version of getting it wrong.

• License #1140511
• Licensed & Insured
• Serving LA's Westside