The state of waterproofing from Soviet roofing material after 45 years (House 1976)

  • Dec 10, 2020

Good afternoon, dear guests and subscribers of my channel!

As you know, we have recently moved to a new house, which has been under construction for 3.5 years (since July 2017. to September 2020). I sighed that a little more money would remain in my pockets.
Now, we are slowly working on the local area, freeing the site from buildings we do not need and planting fruit trees / bushes.

This week, I started to demolish an old house, just the one we bought with the plot and where my whole family lived during construction.

I started the demolition by dismantling the wooden floors:

After dismantling the beams, which were used as railway sleepers, my eyes fell on the base of the walls. The walls at that time are not expensive and are laid in half-brick, plastered with adobe. The brick was laid on two layers of roofing material.

There was no doubt that the material of the Soviet era lies. The condition of the walls is consistent with the documents for the house, where the year of construction is indicated - 1976

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By touch, I could not determine which brand of roofing material was in the hands of RK, RP or RM, nothing remained of the sprinkling, yes and it is difficult to say about the thickness, since the layers were sintered together for 45 years so strongly that they became one carpet. But one thing was clear - this is an "ancient" classic roofing felt made on the basis of cardboard. This is exactly the material that many experts say that it decays in a couple of decades.

I easily broke off a piece of cut-off waterproofing. The material has lost its elasticity over the years and cracked where I applied a slight effort, but to say that it is rotten - no!

On the reverse side (in the photo you can see), there are even small drops of accumulated condensate, which means that the waterproofing worked and did not let moisture into the walls. Yes, I do not argue - already fragile from time to time, but, nevertheless - working!

For 45 years, this material has worked in conditions of severe temperature changes, despite the fact that the brick basement of the house is only at a height of 23 cm. from ground level.

The bitumen has oxidized - this is a fact, the material has become completely non-plastic, has lost its viscosity and elasticity. I clenched it into a fist, and it cracked like thin plastic - into small pieces. But! If I had not disturbed him, it is not known how long this moisture cut-off would have worked, and certainly not one year.

For my part, I think that 45 years is an excellent indicator. Not every modern material will last that long, not everyone.

This is called a test of time, and not those tests on test benches, which are now done by manufacturers of new materials and stamped on tags with a service life of 50+ years.

On this, perhaps - everything, I think, was interesting ...

Thank you for your attention, health and goodness to you!

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