What to do if a wall in a brick house freezes through

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In extreme cases, even significant damage to the walls can occur. Starts with plaster. This works in a similar way to a glass water bottle placed in the freezer. Freezing water molecules increase their volume, and expanding, they destroy the structure of others that are in their path. When this happens in a layer of plaster, it begins to fall off the wall.

The wall in the apartment freezes most often due to the fact that a large amount of moisture accumulates in it. As a result, its surface becomes wet or wet. The reasons for this problem may lie in the following:

Poor organization of the ventilation system. Because of this, the natural drying of the walls is significantly worsened. They constantly accumulate fluid, regardless of the factors why this happens.
Insufficient heating during the heating cold season of the year. In this case, the room in the houses does not warm up properly. Thus, the wall in the apartment freezes through in a very short period of time.
Low competence of builders carrying out the construction of the building. Often, due to their laziness or lack of experience, specialists poorly seal gaps directly near window frames or between structural elements.
Failed waterproofing. This problem most often occurs on the upper floors of multi-storey buildings. If a wall in an apartment freezes, where its owner needs to be understood is a must. Most often, the management company or the housing office is responsible for waterproofing the house on the upper floors.
The occurrence of cracks in the house. This reason is considered by experts to be the most difficult to correct. This is due to the fact that in such situations the house needs to be overhauled. If you do not carry out work to eliminate cracks, every year they will increase in size. This applies to both length and width.

In private homes, the owners themselves deal with this problem. In multi-apartment buildings, these shortcomings must be corrected by the management company or HOA. If the culprit of freezing is a developer organization that made mistakes during the construction of the house, it is necessary to file a complaint with it.

Cold bridges are understood as those areas of the house that should initially be insulated. These include all the corner pieces. Builders are required to insulate them, use special insulation

Important! Internal insulation has a number of advantages. You will not need to obtain permission to transform the facade from the management company

In addition, you can insulate the apartment from the inside on your own.

The wall in the panel house freezes through. What to do

Of course, in each specific case, you need to approach the issue individually, but still we will try to give a general algorithm of actions. So:

It is necessary to establish the cause of freezing. In this case, the reason is not watering the insulation, but determining the location of defects through which water enters the wall.

The best option is to do a thermal imaging survey. In this case, one can rely not on subjective feelings, but on the objective data of the conclusion. Survey data can be useful in resolving issues with the Criminal Code. The second plus is the integrity of the picture, that is, you will see all the places where heat escapes through the wall. Minus - for such an examination, a thermal imager is needed, that is, you will have to turn to professionals. Thermal imaging inspection, of course, is carried out in winter.

Frozen corner. The temperature on the surface of the wall is below the dew point, so the wall gets wet

If it is not possible to make a thermal imaging survey, we will examine the wall ourselves.Condensation, fungus, mold clearly indicate freezing. In addition, there may be more chilled areas. This happens if metal embedded parts are hidden inside (under plaster or concrete embedment). By the way, they can be in the most unexpected, non-project places, since builders are unpredictable people.

In this house, joints and metal elements in the middle of the panels give off heat.

Also, cold places will be in places of voids, or where the waterlogging of the insulation is not yet too great. Without special equipment, you can determine the location of cold spots simply by feeling the wall with your hands. In addition, it will not be superfluous to go through a wall with a lighter or a candle for through blowing. Especially carefully check the joints of panels, corners, skirting boards, window openings and slopes. Checking is best done by removing the wallpaper so that the joints are visible.

On the upper floors, moisture very often leaks into the panel through a poor-quality roof.

Particular attention should be paid to the junctions to the parapet. The parapet slab is obviously much thinner than the wall slab, and if the roof leaks here, then the water goes into the wall, there is nowhere else for it to go

Therefore, together with a representative of the Criminal Code, we inspect the junctions and the drainage system from the roof for leaks and performance.

Fix defects. Qualitatively seal the joints of the panels, the roof (if necessary). Foam holes and voids.
Dry the wall. It is necessary to get rid of moisture in the panel insulation. If this is not done, the wall will become damp, “sweat” and “cry” for several years until completely dry. To do this, we insert tubes of dense polyethylene into the sealing layer between the wall panels. A spirit level tube will do. Through them, water oozes (sometimes pours) out. The remaining moisture is dried with a heat gun or a conventional converter-type electric heater. The latter option is even preferable: the fungus really does not like air movement.
Insulate the wall. This item is performed if the thermal resistance of the wall is insufficient. Unfortunately, it will most likely have to be empirically determined whether this is the case. Talk to neighbors. If the exterior walls are cold throughout the house, it makes sense to install additional insulation. It is imperative to insulate the outside so as not to turn the house into a vapor-proof thermos (see for details). For floors above the first, industrial climbers are attracted for insulation.
Get rid of fungus and mold. Drying the wall alone is not enough. Read about additional mold control measures.
Adjust ventilation if it does not work, or does not work well enough. The tips in this article will help you check this and take action.

In conclusion, I want to note that only serious comprehensive measures will help get rid of the freezing of the walls. But this is how you can return the heat to the house, make it comfortable and cozy.

Good luck and see you on the Remont-Dlya-Vseh.ru blog.

Causes of freezing walls

A cold bridge occurs when the walls are improperly arranged

Determining the cause of freezing walls is not such an easy task. Walls can freeze in any houses: brick and panel type, regardless of their location.

It is clear that the walls begin to freeze due to the appearance of the so-called cold bridge. The question of under what conditions it can occur is worth analyzing in more detail.

Often the freezing of the walls goes hand in hand with dampness and the formation of fungus.

The main reasons for its appearance include:

depressurization of interpanel seams;
small wall thickness of the panel house (not suitable for climatic conditions);
filling the walls with moisture both from the inside and outside (internal flooding with water from neighbors, ingress of rainwater into the destroyed seam);
the destruction of the foundation of the building leads to the divergence of the panels and cracking of the brick walls;
leaky joint between closely spaced houses (distance from 0.5 to 2 m).

All of these reasons can occur equally often. Each of them has distinctive characteristic manifestations.

Violation of the integrity of the seams can cause the formation of a cold bridge

The cause of the outbreak and the destruction of the seam between the panels may be:

the use of unsuitable material (mastic, sealant) for sealing joints (the location of the house and external environmental conditions play an important role);
the performed work on the insulation of the seams was carried out by unskilled specialists, as a result of which voids remained in the sealed joint, where moisture enters, which changes its state when the temperature changes and destroys the wall;
the external wall insulation produced is not of high quality (if any).

Cold bridges can appear not only in block buildings, the wall also successfully freezes in a brick house, where there are no panels and seams between them. In this case, the cause is often an excessive amount of moisture in the apartment or a decrease in the temperature in the room.

cold corner

The temperature in a room or apartment may drop for the following reasons:

poor sealing of window openings (the production of the product or installation work was not carried out according to technology);
the entrance doors in the room are not tightly and hermetically installed;
blows out of the ventilation system;
airiness of the heating system;
low temperature for space heating.

Moisture-soaked walls also run the risk of freezing in winter.

Many owners do not even realize that they can make a freezing wall on their own, unaware of it.

Performing wet cleaning of the premises quite often during the cold period, not properly storing vegetables on the balcony and frequently watering a large number of indoor plants, each of us can harm ourselves by saturating the wall of the building with excess moisture.

To prevent such processes from happening, it is necessary to ventilate the room often and prevent waterlogging in the rooms.

Freezing corner in the house. What to do Solutions.

Siding is a new trend in modern construction. With the help of sailing, you can not only insulate, but also decorate your home. In this article, we go over the siding installation process in detail.

If none of the organizations to which the appeal was made takes any action, it is necessary to address the complaint to such state bodies as:

prosecutor's office;
administration of the city or district;
MOT housing inspection;
court.

When this cold bridge comes into contact with the warm air of the room, the following physical phenomenon occurs on its surface - a “dew point” is formed, i.e. water vapor contained in the air begins to condense and turn into droplets. The wall begins to get wet in this place, and in winter, when the temperature drops, it naturally freezes through.

Everyone expects a cozy atmosphere when returning home, but it is difficult to maintain a feeling of warmth in a room with frozen walls. This problem is especially common in old panel houses.

Troubleshooting

The problem of freezing is eliminated by the organization of internal or external insulation

If you yourself have discovered the freezing zones of the walls, you should immediately take appropriate measures to eliminate this problem.

Often there are situations when residents of an apartment building cannot get an increase in heating capacity from the heating network, and electricity tariffs are constantly growing, and there is no other way out than to insulate the room on their own.

Before proceeding with the insulation of the apartment, it is necessary to decide which of the options for thermal insulation of the room you choose: internal or external insulation.

For the production of external insulation, it is necessary to invite industrial climbers or use the services of an elbow tower.

Internal insulation of a room, wall or apartment as a whole can be done independently, but this will significantly reduce the volume of the room. So, which of the options for sealing and sealing the wall to choose, it is up to each owner to decide individually.

Additional insulation

Most often, the outside of the house is insulated with foam.

As mentioned above, 2 types of thermal insulation can be used for a frozen wall: external and internal.

Despite the fact that skilled workers are involved in the insulation of the building from the outside, each owner must know how this process takes place.

When performing external work on the insulation of the facade, foam is used as a heater, which is glued to the wall and fixed to the dowels in the form of a "fungus".

After that, the outer surface of the insulating material is reinforced with a plaster mesh (glued to the adhesive composition), on which a decorative coating is applied in the form of facade paint or decorative plaster.

You can see an illustrative example of external insulation layers in the diagram below.

To perform internal work on wall insulation, an additional frame is created from an aluminum profile or wooden bars. The width of the frame depends on the thickness of the insulation used.

When creating additional thermal insulation of rooms inside, mineral stone wool is most often used, since it does not contain harmful impurities and has excellent thermal conductivity.

A vapor barrier layer is attached over the installed insulation mats to protect against moisture penetration. For more information about the physics of wall insulation, see this video:

For internal insulation of premises, it is recommended to use mineral wool of maximum density. Despite the fact that such a product will be quite expensive, you can resort to minor reductions in the room, while creating good thermal insulation and sound protection.

When a thick wall is good

Thick stone walls are good for the Mediterranean and tropical climate: there is no danger of freezing, seasonal and daily temperature fluctuations are smoothed out, and in the heat you can do without air conditioning.

Thick walls are risky and expensive. But well-insulated thin masonry in half or a quarter of a brick is another, completely unjustified extreme. The fact is that a moderately massive stone wall protected from heat loss is able to accumulate thermal energy and gradually release it into the space of the room. Warm, dry, brick walls are a great source of soft home warmth. Like a sponge, they absorb the energy of water heating systems or infrared emitters, and themselves become secondary sources of infrared energy. Comfortable conditions in such a room are quickly restored even after intensive through ventilation; next to thick, well-insulated walls, you can put both a bed and a desktop - their surface will not “cool”.

We eliminate dampness in the corners

Attentive owners will always notice dampened corners in time and establish the cause of sputum.

After finding the culprit of the problem, you can start fixing it:

When the wall freezes, measures must be taken to insulate it. The most effective is the insulation of the walls from the outside. It will not only reduce dampness, but also reduce heat loss. They do this with either mineral wool or polystyrene foam. However, for owners of apartments in high-rise buildings, such insulation is a rather troublesome business. If problems arise with external insulation, you can insulate the wall inside the room.

When applying insulation from the inside, thermal calculations should be made in order to avoid the appearance of condensate and wetting of the insulation material, as a result of which its insulation properties are lost.

To make correct calculations, the humidity in the room, the climate, the degree of thermal conductivity of the wall, etc. are taken, therefore, in such cases, expert advice is simply necessary.
With an inefficient heating system, additional sources of thermal energy should be used. It can be an electric fireplace, a stationary battery, a radiator or other alternative heaters, which are recommended to be installed in places where there is most dampness.
If condensation appears due to excessive tightness of the room after installing plastic windows, the room should be ventilated more often.
In case of insufficient wall thickness, it is recommended, if possible, to clad the building from the outside with an additional ball of bricks or apply insulation under the plaster. From the inside, the walls can be insulated with slab insulation (polystyrene, mineral wool), placed on the frame with 5 cm spacers for filling expanded clay into it. This building material will absorb moisture from a damp wall and prevent the spread of mold.
You can improve ventilation by installing an additional hood, and even at the bottom of the door at the entrance to a separate room, you can make a slot for air regulation. Improve ventilation should also be in the bathroom and kitchen, which are most often sources of dampness.
If there is a basement under the housing, moisture can penetrate through microcracks in the floor, as a result of which the walls become damp. To eliminate such a problem, the floor is treated with an antifungal agent, a moisture-resistant base is laid on it, and all cracks are sealed with a sealant.
If the cause of damp corners was a fungus that appeared in the wall and mold on the plaster, then all the affected areas are treated with antifungal solutions, plastered again with a high-quality mixture if necessary, and only after that new wallpapers are glued.
With poor-quality installation of balcony slabs, moisture penetrates into the seams, so the joints between the slab and the wall should be sealed so that there are no leaks leading to damp spots.
When caulking seams in external walls, care should be taken to ensure that closed and open joints provide air protection, and the latter, moreover, are well protected from moisture.

What should be done if a wall in a brick house freezes through

Thus, there are a large number of options for what to do when the wall in the apartment is frozen. All of them should be considered before choosing one or another way to solve the problem.

Many tenants, in order to prevent the walls from freezing, make external wall insulation. Especially if this wall is corner in your house. Although many say that this warming will not give much benefit, but sometimes just a few degrees will be enough for the dampness to go away. Complaining is the last thing. First you need to try to solve the problem yourself.

Uniformity and low permeability - make the thermal insulation properties of ecowool quite competitive.

First of all, the walls must dry thoroughly. Therefore, you should not engage in insulation immediately with the onset of spring, because moisture will remain in the walls. After performing the insulation, you can see inside a little aesthetic and not very healthy spots of moisture, fungus and mold.

The apartment itself is corner and in winter such a problem takes place. But I know for sure that it is useless to demand anything from the housing and communal services, because after all, I live in this apartment, and I have to worry about my well-being. And so I do, I insulate the walls, in addition, I send heaters to the walls, and most importantly, I don’t think about the bad and about the fact that the whole world owes me, along with housing and communal services. No one will worry about me but me.

Apartment on the top floor. Angular. The roof was leaky, but the riser was clogged, the batteries were barely warm.The fungus went in the corner from the ceiling down the wall. I had to clean everything up to bare walls, process it with copper sulphate. All this is long, dreary and costly ... Definitely, the fault of the Housing Office, because the roof is in his charge and the risers in the interfloor ceilings.

We will suggest that the causes of glaciation are in violation of waterproofing, vapor barrier and thermal insulation of seams. Such formation of "cold bridges" is typical for the freezing of a brick wall and a panel one.

Ecowool consists of fluff pulp (81%), which is obtained by recycling waste paper. The composition also contains fire-retardant additives-fire retardants (12%) and boric acid (7%), which protects floors from fungi and bacteria.

Freezing water molecules increase their volume, and expanding, they destroy the structure of others that are in their path.

You can do it yourself, if necessary, hire qualified craftsmen. It can take quite a long time to process the wall, since before restoring its appearance, it is necessary to achieve complete drying of the surface.

What to look for:

pronounced seams,
local painting of walls,
during the thaw, visible stripes on the outside of the wall,
spots of moisture on the walls inside the premises, often under windows,
mold and mildew on interior walls.

There is an architectural way to avoid the formation of the so-called geometric "cold bridges" - the device of beveled or rounded corners of the building. But not everywhere, for obvious reasons, this method can be applied. However, it is quite possible to arrange pilasters or other decorative elements on the facade.

Wall insulation from the inside: whim or necessity? A wall in a brick house freezes: what to do? Where to apply?

The question is of interest to all owners. Failure to comply with building codes is the most common cause of building thermal insulation failure. In turn, such problems not only lead to a decrease in the temperature inside the building, but also contribute to the development of mold that occurs in places where the insulation is the weakest.

Each of these materials has its own advantages and disadvantages. Both will protect the walls from direct contact with moisture and low temperatures. However, mineral wool, as a completely natural product, will provide the building not only with high thermal insulation, but also with high vapor permeability.

The lower the humidity, the lower the condensation temperature should be, i.e., it is more difficult to freeze the condensate. For this reason, hoods are made in rooms with sources of moisture.

Why do the walls freeze? The reasons for the freezing of walls are, most often, the mistakes of negligent builders, coupled with the laws of nature, or rather, thermodynamics. As you know, the outer walls in the house should serve as heat insulators - do not let heat out and cold into the room.

With freezing it is better to start fighting in the spring

Freezing of the walls of the house is one such problem, which is certainly easier to prevent than to eliminate the consequences of negligence later. What can be done if wall freezing is a problem in our home?

The bad news: if we notice a problem in the winter, then at the moment there is nothing. Good: in one season the house will not collapse, and in the summer it will be possible to start treatment.

You can trust the sun, which will dry the walls in spring and summer.If this does not work, for example, on the north side of the house, it is worth investing in drying. The best time for this will be at the end of summer. And in the spring we will fight against the appearance of mold and fungus, which must be treated with appropriate fungicidal preparations. It happens that even repeated use of the drug is required before the problem disappears.

Tips for those who freeze the walls in the house

It is most likely not worth filing an application with the management company regarding the repair of walls, since they will not make repairs at the expense of the company

To get the people in charge to pay attention to you, write a collective statement so that the initiative comes from the majority. If you decide to do the insulation of the panels yourself from the outside, first you need to obtain the appropriate permission from the housing department or another management company

Styrofoam is mainly used to insulate panels from the outside. This material is not of high quality, but applicable in this situation.
The first thing to start with the repair of freezing walls is to find the cause of such freezing. Next, you need to clean all the places where mold appeared, then go directly to the repair work. If you don't do all the steps in order, you risk wasting your money.

Dear readers! If you still have questions on the topic “What to do if the wall in the apartment freezes through” or have any other questions, ask them right now - contact the online consultant form or call us at 8 (800) -350-30-02 (call and consultation are free for all regions of Russia)! Was the Recording helpful? 64 out of 99 readers found the Post helpful.

Getting rid of freezing corners

The ideal way to solve the problem is to insulate the entire facade from the outside and securely seal the seams. It is quite possible to repair your own country house, but in an apartment building you will have to turn to the management company for help. But do not despair. And in a single apartment you can get a good result.

First of all, you need to remove the wallpaper. If there are no visible cracks, then the walls are tapped with a hammer - where there are voids, the sound will be deaf. Next, remove the plaster over the discovered cavities and dry the corner thoroughly. If there is mold, be sure to treat with special antifungal agents. Sometimes the mold infestation is so extensive that the use of acid, blowtorch fire, or surface milling is necessary. All cracks and voids are filled with mounting foam or liquid foam. This will prevent moisture from entering the room even if there are cracks in the outer wall. And finally, the remaining foam is cleaned and the corner is plastered. Work is best done in the warm season to completely get rid of dampness and mold indoors.

In the event that very large voids are found, they should not be filled with mineral wool or tow, as these materials contribute to the accumulation of moisture. It is better to use the same mounting foam. It is resistant to moisture, is not subject to rotting and mold, has high adhesive properties, does not lose its qualities when frozen.

Insulation of the entire facade from the outside

Today, manufacturers offer a variety of materials that greatly facilitate the repair process and bring it to a whole new level. For example, special heat-insulating (“warm”) plasters are light mixtures in which microscopic polystyrene foam granules or light natural aggregates are used instead of sand. Such plaster is several times lighter than usual, it is well applied and sets. Due to the presence of air pores, warm mixtures have high vapor permeability, regulate condensation and ensure a healthy indoor climate.A layer of warm plaster of 50 mm in terms of heat-insulating effect is equivalent to laying one and a half to two bricks or a two-centimeter layer of polystyrene foam.

Not so long ago, new materials appeared on the market, produced by different manufacturers under different trademarks, but united by the common name “liquid thermal insulation”. It is indispensable for such problem areas as freezing corners. The paint-like insulation suspension consists of hollow microspheres (ceramic, glass, silicone or polyurethane) that effectively reflect heat radiation. The microspheres are suspended in a binder composition of synthetic rubber or acrylic polymers, antifungal and anti-corrosion additives and coloring pigments. Such a composition gives liquid thermal insulation the properties of water resistance, flexibility, lightness and strength. The thermal conductivity of liquid heat insulators is much lower than that of conventional heaters. Several layers of such paint can replace 5 - 10 cm of polyurethane foam or mineral wool.

True, all this is only from the words of manufacturers and sellers, many practical tests have proven the ineffectiveness of such paint as a heater. Its main task is to reduce heat losses on pipes of hot water mains and boilers.

Application of liquid insulation

The problem of freezing corners can be prevented even at the stage of building a house or repairing a new building. In accordance with the laws of physics, the temperature of the inner surface of the corner is always lower than the temperature of the walls that form this corner. Experienced designers say that ideally, the corners of the walls, both external and internal, should be rounded or beveled. Rounding or chamfering only the inner corner (with wall material or heat-insulating plaster) can reduce the temperature difference between the walls and the corner by 25-30%. The same role is played by pilasters on the outer corners of the building. This is not only a well-known architectural technique, but also a way of additional insulation.

You can use interesting design solutions. For example, in the corner of the ceiling, mount a plasterboard box with illumination from ordinary incandescent lamps. Working lamps will heat the air inside the structure, thereby pushing the dew point inside the wall.