Applied Technologies 20' Fast Set Concrete Crack Repair Kit - Hydra Stop 300 Polyurethane Foam for Wall Cracks, Prevents Basement Flooding & Water Damage, Quick-Setting Waterproof Sealing Solution

This year has brought an unusually high rainfall to my area. For the first time ever I had water seep through a crack in basement. Foundation poured in 1986. Had this kit recommended from a carpenter I know who said all the foundation guys he knows use it. Pros - The instructions are very clear and easy to follow. The kit has everything you need if your basement is raw concrete. I had a sealer on mine, so I bought a concrete diamond disc for my angle grinder and brought it down to bare. I strongly recommend buying a vacuum attachment for your angle grinder if you need to do this as well. Concrete dust sucks, I used a vacuum attachment. There were more than enough ports and proxy paste to setup. In fact I have 2 of 4 tubes of proxy paste left. I wish this kit was 1 tube less proxy paste and one tube more Hydra 300 (see below). The caulk gun I got was pretty solid construction. I saw some complaints, but this one is way better than a generic big box store. I used it for a tube. It worked fine. I swapped to my nice ratchet one after, but you can easily do this job with the supplied one. Cons - This kit was perfect for my 7' crack (in picture) . There is no way you're doing 20' so I'm glad I didn't buy the smaller kit. I would have liked one more tube of the hydra stop to be extra sure, but it expanded thru to outside so I'm good but it was close. If you have 6' this is good to go. If you have 7' or more I would get additional tubes of just the hydra 300. Also the Overall this is a great product that sealed my crack from inside basement all the way thru to the outside. So I am very happy I used this and saved a ton of money hiring someone else to do it. This can be done in 8hrs by someone with no experience.

The is my first impressions, will update long term results after spring rains. 1-clean very well. I wire wheeled with a grinder and is still seemed dirty but porous. Makes lots of dust (duh) 1-glueing the ports is easy but be generous on the outside. I have faux stamped brick and it didn’t get into cracks easily. It’s a fine line of plugging the the port and filling voids 2 -mix in small batches and prepare on cardboard and pitch when done. It dried VERY fast and about 5 minute comfortable working time. Prepare!!!! 3- sealing the cracks is kind of a pain. Need a large amount but have to move fast. Mix with something bigger and sturdier than the wood provided. I eventually ditched the popsicle sticks and just used my finger /gloves to apply. Felt like I worked it smoother and evenly. Apply a generous amount because this stuff finds every pinhole (see photos) 4a- DO NOT USE THE GUN PROVIDED, don’t think about it, don’t try. You are not different and no i’m not using it wrong. Get a better sturdier one. Dear god please don’t do it. 4-heat the stuff in water like it says if have hairlines. Have your plugs ready, easily accessible. Have paper towel ready in small batches. Have a can nearby. Have something on the floor all over wider than crack. And most of all have someone there to just give a hand. Once this stuff starts flowing, it runs like hot honey, switching cartridges mid run gave me anxiety as it flings like water. Let pressure off the gun when switching holes. 4c- press them caps on well, the foam expanding can pop them off. It expands a ton. Time will tell.

Update: After 3 days of heavy rain, the first hour of which would have previously caused water to drip from the crack, I can confirm that the wall no longer leaks. Complete success! Now I can replace the drywall and reinstall flooring. __________________________________________ Original review: My project appears to have been a success. I will update if any hard rains prove that to be inaccurate. This would normally garner a 5 star review, but inconsistent description/photos compared to what arrived, as described below, lost the product a star here. This is going to be long because I want to do a brain dump here after spending many hours researching how to best seal a leaking crack in my poured foundation wall. Hopefully someone else can benefit from all the reading I did. If you have a leaking crack, then the first decision you have to make (after deciding to do it yourself) is whether to use epoxy or polyurethane. Epoxy bonds the concrete back together and fills the crack with material (very hard, rigid plastic) that is stronger than the concrete. Polyurethane fills the crack with a closed cell foam seal. It’s like inserting a waterproofing gasket between the 2 sides of the crack. Going into this, I really wanted to use epoxy. I have an engineering degree (electrical, but we all take the same classes the first couple of years), and I usually go for the overkill belt and suspenders approach. I wanted the strength of epoxy, not because my wall needed it, but rather because I just liked that I would be bonding my wall back together - perhaps stronger than it had ever been. However, after a lot of reading, it became increasingly apparent that polyurethane was the better approach in my situation. First, my crack was vertical, so not structural. This crack formed due to normal settling of poured concrete. Nothing was about to fall down, so in this case I could use epoxy or polyurethane. Second, this crack was wet. It wasn’t flowing water unless it rained, but it would not completely dry out either. I could get the face of it dried with a fan, but the interior of the crack was definitely still wet and would stay that way unless we experienced a drought. That meant that epoxy might not adhere, and at least would not adhere optimally. Polyurethane would actually like that moisture. Finally, over the years this thing had been leaking, it deposited a pile of dirt/mud inside the basement behind a wall. That meant there was a decent chance that there was a void on the outside of the crack. If I used epoxy, I could end up pumping the whole kit into that exterior void and not the crack. Polyurethane, on the other hand, expands and foams as it reacts with moisture and would potentially fill any such void. For those reasons, I went with polyurethane. It wasn’t because polyurethane was cheaper. I would be happy paying a reasonable price difference between the two for a better result, but almost everything I read pointed to polyurethane being the better solution for my application. So I started searching for polyurethane crack injection kits. There are quite a few companies selling kits. As I kept researching, I found more and more of them. I read an embarrassing number of reviews, read kit instructions, and watched installation videos – both by the manufacturers and customers. The kits seem to be more similar than they are different, but I did notice some differences. They are all similar in that the process comprises gluing, with epoxy (even if you are injecting urethane), a series of access ports along the length of the crack and otherwise sealing the entire length of the crack with epoxy. This gives you a way to essentially squirt/force (under light pressure) a fluid into the crack without it flowing right back out of the crack. Then you inject the fluid resin (polyurethane in my case) into the ports until you have filed the crack. Some of the differences I noticed between kits was the stated set/cure times for the epoxy sealing paste and the urethane. Many touted the fast setting nature of their urethane. When you are deciding, don’t get too hung up on that. Speed is important for contractors to be able to get a job done in a day or half day or maybe a couple of hours, but if you are a homeowner, unless you are racing the next rain storm, or have an active flow, why are you in a hurry? You live there and can go upstairs to get a sandwich while it sets and cures or come back the next morning. What you really don’t want is to have the stuff set before you are done getting it where it needs to go. Because of that I was actually looking for products that gave me the longest working time. Some kits used twin tube cartridges (that require a special caulk gun) with a mixing nozzle to force the components to mix as they exit the tube, others use single tube cartridges (that fit into a standard caulk gun) with internal chambers and a mixing nozzle, and some (these may have been epoxy injection kits) kept the second component in a nozzle where you attach the nozzle and then mix all of the batch in the tube at once with a plunger. Between the first 2 types, I didn’t care. If the kit came with a dual chamber caulk gun and wasn’t any more expensive, it didn’t matter, but I did want external mixing. I didn’t want something that I mixed all at once as I was afraid it might set up in the tube. One kit I noticed (this one being reviewed) had a unique feature that others did not. The epoxy sealing paste was shown, in the kit photos on Amazon, on their website, and in their install video, as coming in internally chambered tubes instead of in plastic jars. I liked that because I have worked with a lot of JB Weld over the years and I knew the most tedious part of this job was probably going to be spooning out equal amounts of 2 part epoxy, mixing it, and spreading it on the wall. The tubes shown would push out equal amounts and I could just get a small batch, stir it up, apply, and repeat. Limited mess and no spooning out blobs from a can. Well, when this kit showed up, guess what came in the box? Yep… plastic jars of 2 part epoxy. I was moderately perturbed by that, and that is why I have deducted a star here. Onto my install… I pressure washed the crack. That’s not part of the instructions, but I wanted to get any dirt/mud out that I could. I also used a die grinder with a wire brush instead of the hand brush provided to get rid of loose concrete. If you do this, definitely wear safety glasses and a respirator. Also be careful not to polish the sides of the crack with the die grinder. You want those to be rough so the epoxy will stick. I am sure the hand brush they send is fine. Again, I am captain overkill. I also used a trick that was not included in their instructions. I think I saw it in a This Old House or a Bob Villa tutorial. They actually used thin nails in the tutorial, but I didn’t have any the right size on hand, so I took a wire coat hanger and broke into pieces that were about 1.5 times as long as the ports. I used a small hammer to gently tap these into the crack at approximately 8 inch intervals. These were my port locations. I only tapped these in enough for them to hold themselves up. You are going to have to pull them back out later by hand. Then I mixed up my first batch of epoxy. Don’t mix up too much or you will just waste it. It sets up very quickly. Again, this is a feature for someone who wants to get the job done fast. It’s actually nice for the ports, but I could do with a bit more working time for the surface seal step. You only need a little dab on each side of each port – especially with the coat hanger wire there to keep the nozzle on the wall. The wire ensures that you put the port right over the crack, and that you have an open path to the crack from the port. I put a bit of epoxy on the grooved sides of the port flange and slid those over each of my wires. Then I went upstairs and hung out with my kids for a bit. When I came back all of the ports were secured. I removed the coat hanger wires at this point being careful to gently wiggle them out of the crack without damaging the port. Then it was time to seal the crack and cover the port bases with epoxy. As expected, spooning out the various batches of the sealing epoxy was the most tedious part of this job. Again, do not mix up more than maybe a golf ball size glob of part A and the same amount of part B. Any more than that and it will set before you can use it. I found that I could do 2 or 3 ports worth of sealing in each batch. I mixed 5 separate batches. I found that the thin popsicle sticks/tongue depressors were not optimal for mixing because of the rounded tip. For that, I used a wooden paint stirrer that I had. The flat edge and larger contact area on the mixing palate made it easier to mix all of the material together as well as spoon it off of the palate onto the wall. The supplied sticks were good for spreading it on the wall and ports. For the first batch I used a Chinette paper plate for mixing. I don’t recommend that as the edge/lip of the paper plate made it harder of get all of the epoxy off the plate. I couldn’t lay the stick flat along the surface of the plate because of the lip. After that batch I cut the outer Amazon box that the kit shipped in (not the kit box) into a number of rectangles to use for the purpose. That worked great. After completing the crack seal I left it to cure overnight. It was cured sufficiently to start the injection well before that, but again, I live here. I’m not in a hurry. The next morning, I filled up a 5 gallon bucket with hot tap water and dropped all of my polyurethane tubes into that to thin them out so the resin could flow into the narrowest parts of the crack. While those were warming up, I squirted water into the ports per the instructions. Don’t skip this, the water is needed to get the resin to foam and expand, and helps the urethane to seal to the inside walls of the crack. Then it was injection time. Before I started I realized that due to the position of the crack and the wall I was working behind, I was going to need to use the included extension hose attachment. This worked, but be forewarned. If you need to use that hose, you are going to wish you had another hand, and you are going to make a much bigger mess than you would without it. The hose has a pinch stop on it to keep the material from flowing out while you switch ports, but I found that I lost more trying to use that and then release it than just trying to hold the ends up to keep the resin from flowing out. Between that and trying to hold the mixing nozzle into the end of the tube to keep a seal, you are going to make a mess on the floor. It will quite likely be a much bigger mess than can be contained with the thin gauge trash bag supplied in the kit as a drop cloth. Prepare accordingly. I injected each port in turn, starting from the bottom. Everything went just as shown in their video with a few exceptions. There was the aforementioned mess. The kit comes with a number of sets of gloves. Use them. You don’t want this junk on your hands. There is a good chance you’ll ruin your shirt and pants and maybe your shoes doing this. I had my wife there to help hand me additional tubes of polyurethane and any tools I needed. I was working on the other side of drywall that I had crawled through after cutting myself an access hole. If you can find a helper, definitely get one. The other thing that did not go perfectly to plan was due to my lack of situational awareness and lack of experience in doing this before. I made a good recovery though. On about the 5th or 6th port, I got concerned. The crack was not taking any additional resin. I squeezed the caulk gun handle and nothing went in. I held constant pressure, then the port above the one I was on showed urethane coming out of it (but it was foam not liquid like the other ports). I went to that port… same thing. Then the next. There was some foaming in the external fill tube that I could see. Had the material set in the tube? That was a big fear of mine after reading a number of reviews where that had (allegedly) happened to people, or with the tube only expelling half its contents. Then I recalled that the instructions mentioned that the caulk gun plunger will only push half way into a multi-chambered caulk tube. Ah, so I the tube was empty and I needed another one? Yep. That was it. After that it all went to plan. I am still unsure what the second chamber is for with this polyurethane – whether there is an activator or both sides are the same stuff. The description says it is a single component urethane and you can even buy it in gallon containers from their website. Regardless, that (the two chambered tube already bottoming out because it was empty) was the issue and I suspect it was probably the issue in at least a subset of the reviews that I read (for other kits) where the reviewer thought the material had set in the tube. It had not set. It was just empty. I used 3.5 tubes in a 8-9 foot crack, so I definitely had voids, and I definitely bought the right kit and chose wisely with polyurethane vs. epoxy. I went outside to watch for any fun and there it was. Foam was coming out from behind some decorative stacked stone that covered the outside of the crack. I wiped as much of this off as I could to make clean up as easy as possible later. In retrospect, I wish I had just left it alone to clean up later. In the areas where I wiped it off, the resin cured into a hard smooth shell that was harder to grind off with my die grinder than the places covered with foam. It hasn’t rained yet, so it hasn’t been tested, but I can’t imagine it is going to leak. Unless I edit, assume I had 100% success.