Making Ocean Side Basements Waterproof

Puerto de la Cruz is a seaside tourist destination located on the north coast of Tenerife, the largest of the seven Canary Islands. By proximity to the ocean, it is not unusual that there are no basements in this area and those that have been built are constantly battling with water ingress.

However, after having been introduced to the Penetron system, the engineers developed a design to take advantage of its capabilities. Located only 200 meters from the ocean, the foundation was designed at 1.23 meters below sea level.

Despite continuously pumping water out, the excavation area constantly had 5 - 10 cm of standing water. Penetron Admix was dosed in all CEMEX concrete for base slab, exterior walls and pillars. During high tide, the water level rose significantly and the pumps had to be turned off at night due to noise pollution. Hence, the base slab was repeatedly flooded with water.

It is worth noting that the cold joints were simply treated with a coat of Penetron slurry, no other joint waterproofing material was applied. Even in these critical conditions, this was enough to completely waterproof these joints. Hairline cracks were simply treated with Penetron. Four days later, there was no more water leakage through these cracks and white crystal growth could be seen on the surface. Needless to say, the engineers are extremely satisfied with the Penetron performance.