Basement wall cinder block stripping

JBurd

JBurd

New member
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A homeowner is having me strip their basement walls because they had been painted and water was seeping through (they were not properly sealed). I am facing two problems on stripping these cinder blocks. 1. some of the walls (see pic 1) have some sort of primer or sealer that I can't strip 2. the walls that all fo the paint did come off of (see pics 2 and 3) have some white stuff near the bottom of the blocks. it is where the water seepage was evident before the paint was stripped.

I've experimented with taginator, a wire brush, 3000 psi 5.5 gpm with turbo nozzle and mustiatic acid 3 to 1.

What is this stuff? How do I get it off? the main concern is the stuff from pic 1.
 
Soy gel.....not cheap but very very effective. Or something with MEK in it - definitely nasty stuff - wear lots of ppe. What kind of drainage is in the floor?
 
Stuff at the bottom is probably calcite buildup from the moisture - too late for it to be efflo.
 
There's a good drain in the floor, not hard to divert to. I haven't tried a sodium hydroxide stripper, my experience has been that if taginator (potassium hydroxide) can't do it, shx can't either. the taginator worked really well on the parts with one coat of paint (aside from the calcite stuff.) I'll look into the soy gel, its talked up quite abit on this forum. the homeowner is going to experiment with the wire grinder type thing. I'm not sandblasting in doors if I can help it. I did wet-sandblast the exteriors and they turned out great.
 
Another way to look at this......on the walls where the "other" stuff won't come off (not the calcite) - these may have been properly sealed and if that ain't broke, don't fix it. Clearly he has to recoat the entire basement anyway.
 
Looks like Driloc(k) paint that stuff is designed to penetrate and be waterproof. If its that solid I would leave it and go over it with the driloc paint again (I used it in my basement works great). If you have to remove it you may need to wet sandblast it like you said. To remove the calcite call ecochem they have products to get that off the wall.
 
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