Stucco waterproofing on a Brooklyn rowhouse deals with two elevations you own and two walls you share. Water entering on a neighbor’s side of a shared wall ends up in the same masonry you are standing next to, which is why some leaks here have no source on your own building.
An attached Brooklyn house exposes a front and a rear, and that is all. The other two sides are party walls, each one a single piece of masonry serving your house and the one beside it. There is no cavity between the properties and no line inside the wall marking where one ends.
As a stucco waterproofing contractor in Brooklyn that changes the first question we ask. Not what is wrong with your wall, but which wall the water is actually in. Masonry moves moisture sideways as well as down, so a failure that started on the far side of a party wall arrives on your side looking exactly like a problem with your own building.
Four things that follow from sharing two of your four walls.
A Brooklyn rowhouse takes weather on the front and the rear and nowhere else. Fewer entry points than a detached house, but everything that does get in arrives through one of two faces.
A party wall is one piece of brick serving two properties. Water travels laterally through masonry as well as downward, so a failure originating next door reaches your side of the same wall.
Where a party wall carries up between two Brooklyn roofs, that junction takes weather from both sides and is maintained by neither. It is the most common source we find and the least likely to have been inspected.
Both faces of a party wall are enclosed, and the roof on the other side of it is not yours to walk on. Half the surface that keeps water out of your house is not available to you to check.
Front, rear, or one of the two shared walls. Damp at a party wall behaves differently from damp on an exposed elevation, and on a Brooklyn rowhouse getting that wrong sends the whole job in the wrong direction.
Where the party wall meets both roofs, including the flashing on your side and what is visible of the other. That junction accounts for more of what we find than either of your own elevations does.
Where the entry point sits on the neighbor's side, we will tell you that rather than treating your face of the wall and taking the money. What happens next is a conversation between the two houses rather than a repair we can sell you.
It happens more often on attached houses than most owners expect, and it is worth recognizing early because the alternative is expensive. Both your elevations get inspected, nothing obvious turns up, so somebody proposes coating the rear wall on the basis that it must be something. The water keeps arriving because it was never coming from there. If your front and rear are sound and the damp sits at a party wall, the useful next step is a conversation with the house next door rather than another product applied to your own masonry.
Attached rows run through Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, and the shared wall question is the same on every block.
See stucco contractor Brooklyn for our other stucco work in the borough, or stucco waterproofing NYC for how water moves through a stucco wall.
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Yes, and it is common on attached Brooklyn houses. A party wall is one piece of masonry serving both properties with no cavity and no separation inside it. Water entering on the neighbor’s side travels through and appears on yours, looking exactly like a fault on your own building.
Because only two of your four walls are yours to inspect. If the front and rear check out and damp is still arriving, the likely path is a party wall or the roof junction above it, neither of which is visible from inside your Brooklyn house.
Only partially, and it rarely solves anything. Treating your face of a shared wall does nothing about water entering on the other side of the same masonry. Where the source is next door, the fix has to happen there, which makes it a conversation before it is a job.
At the junction where the party wall carries up between the two roofs. That point takes weather from both sides, sits on a boundary, and is maintained by neither household. On Brooklyn rows it accounts for more leaks than either exposed elevation does.
Two, the front and the rear. That is a smaller area to keep water out of than a detached house has, which sounds like an advantage and mostly is. The trade is that the other two walls are shared, so half your envelope depends on somebody else.
