The danger of water leaks affecting the steel reinforcing inside concrete

The effects of spalling on your property

When water permeates  through reinforced concrete because of a water leak, the water that comes into contact with the steel reinforcing will most often cause oxidation (rust). 

The oxidation causes the steel reinforcing beam to expand inside the concrete, and as a result, the concrete is put under internal pressure. This pressure often causes the concrete to crack from the inside and makes the structure extremely weak.  This is process is called spalling

Huge chunks of concrete then become loose and pose a threat to the people living within the building. We have had clients who have told us that they were woken in the middle of the night with a loud crashing sound coming from their dining room. Upon investigation, they discovered a massive chunk of concrete had come loose and had fallen on their dining room table. They were only too grateful that the spalling had occurred in their diningroom and not in their bedroom. 

This is the reason why we insist that clients remedy a leak as soon as it becomes apparent. The cost of spalling is not only one that relates to your personal wellbeing, but it also has an impact on the sale of your property. 

Since the law requires that the property is sold in a habitable condition, we have had clients call us in a panic when the buyer of their property delayed the sale because they discovered that a leak in the property which was only repaired just before the sale had resulted in spalling. 

The client believed that since the leak was not a major leak that affected their water bill, they would just leave it as it is until just before they sold their property. We remedies the leak, but when the concrete dried out, the result was a decrease in the amount of water saturation in the concrete, and needless to say, the process of spalling sped up significantly.