Four Ways That Water Gets Into Buildings
Water enters buildings by bulk transport, by capillarity, by piggybacking with infiltrating air, and by vapor diffusion. Once you get your priorities straight, you can implement strategies to prevent water damage.
Poetry used to be memorized, not written down, and handed from bard to bard, memory to memory, down through the generations. Perhaps folks out there have memorized poems back when schools taught such things, or for personal interest.
Not counting things I have written, I know only one poem by memory, written by David McCord. As proof, I will recite it for you here.
Epitaph on a Waiter
By and by
God caught his eye.
Water gets in through four pathways
Some things are inevitable. Like the Phillies beating the Red Sox in the World Series. And water getting into buildings. Water gets its way--or four ways, actually.
Water moves in, on, and through buildings through the following four paths. I'll go through these in order of magnitude--the most water is involved in the first path, and the least is involved in the fourth. That order is important because it helps us set management priorities.
1) "Bulk" water: rain, runoff, and wind-driven water
Liquid or "bulk water"--rain, runoff, and other flows--is driven primarily by gravity but also by wind and pressure differences. Bulk water on the exterior of a building is managed by moving water down and off of the building, while site features move the water away from the building. A system of interconnected flashings, drainage planes or weather-resistive barriers, free-draining spaces, and claddings manage exterior bulk water.
Inside the building, we manage bulk water by preventing or containing plumbing leaks and condensation. Collection trays or pans, sensor-driven shut-offs, and routine maintenance defend against interior bulk water problems. Sprinkler systems introduce bulk water inside of a building in the event of a fire, but in addition to their benefits in quickly dousing a fire, they often prevent much larger magnitudes of water from being hosed in by the fire department.
2) Capillary water
Capillary water moves under tension through porous building materials or narrow channels between building materials that act like tubes. The porous nature of many building materials, and the incredible cohesion and adhesion of water means that liquid water can move against the force of gravity quite effectively.
The primary defenses against capillary water movement are capillary breaks in appropriate locations, such as the between the foundation and moisture-sensitive materials sitting on it. Capillary breaks are non-porous materials--such as sheet metal, impermeable membranes, closed-cell foams or plastics--or free-draining air spaces, generally 3/8" (10 mm) or larger.
3) Air-transported moisture
Air-transported moisture is the vapor content of air as it leaks out of or into a building. Air leakage is driven by a combination of holes through the building envelopeExterior components of a house that provide protection from colder (and warmer) outdoor temperatures and precipitation; includes the house foundation, framed exterior walls, roof or ceiling, and insulation, and air sealing materials. and one of three driving forces: wind, stack effectAlso referred to as the chimney effect, this is one of three primary forces that drives air leakage in buildings. When warm air is in a column (such as a building), its buoyancy pulls colder air in low in buildings as the buoyant air exerts pressure to escape out the top. The pressure of stack effect is proportional to the height of the column of air and the temperature difference between the air in the column and ambient air. Stack effect is much stronger in cold climates during the heating season than in hot climates during the cooling season., or mechanically induced pressure differences (fans) between the inside and outside of the building.
The primary concern (other than the heat content of the escaping or entering air) of moisture-laden leaking air occurs when it is accompanied by a temperature drop, increasing condensation potential. For example, warm, humid air from a shower in the cold winter months can leak around the bathroom light fixture into the attic, condensing on the roof sheathingMaterial, usually plywood or oriented strand board (OSB), but sometimes wooden boards, installed on the exterior of wall studs, rafters, or roof trusses; siding or roofing installed on the sheathing—sometimes over strapping to create a rainscreen. --eventually leading to rot.
We manage air-transported moisture with a continuous air barrier in the building envelope, built with interconnected air-impermeable sheet goodsMaterial, usually plywood or oriented strand board (OSB), but sometimes wooden boards, installed on the exterior of wall studs, rafters, or roof trusses; siding or roofing installed on the sheathing—sometimes over strapping to create a rainscreen., caulks, sealants, and spray foams. To be completely effective, air barriers should be in contact with thermal barriers (insulation).
4) Vapor diffusion
Vapor diffusion is the movement of water as a gas according to relative humidity gradients or differences in vapor pressure. Water vapor moves from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration.
You often hear about use of vapor barriers to restrict vapor movement in buildings, but anything that slows vapor movement is a double-edged sword: while we may want to control the movement of vapor into a building assembly, we should be much more interested in how the vapor permeability of individual building materials and assemblies affect the movement of vapor out of building assemblies. While building assemblies can get wet by all four forms of water movement, once water gets in, the main way it can get out is by diffusion, so it pays to make sure that assemblies can dry through diffusion in one or more directions.
Quite often the vapor drive of water into building assemblies is climate- and season-related: vapor drive is from the inside of heated buildings in the winter and from the outside of cooled buildings during the summer. We need to balance the restriction of this climate- and season-based vapor movement into building assemblies with the allowance for drying of the same assemblies. We do this by conducting a vapor profileA vapor profile is an assessment of the relative vapor permeabilities of each individual component in a building assembly and a determination of the assembly's overall drying potential and drying direction based on vapor permeabilities of all of the components. The vapor profile addresses not only how the building's enclosure assembly protects itself from getting wet, but also how it dries when it gets wet. For a detailed treatment of this subject, see Building Science Corporation's article Understanding Vapor Barriers. analysis or hygrothermalA term used to characterize the temperature (thermal) and moisture (hygro) conditions particularly with respect to climate, both indoors and out. (humidity plus temperature) modeling.
Water management and insulation
That's a lot to digest, but it helps to understand these fundamentals when you are thinking about adding insulation to your building. Insulation restricts the flow of heat, which in turn reduces ability of building assemblies to dry out when wet. Lots of old buildings don't manage moisture very well, but that's not a problem for them because they are so poorly insulated that they dry out easily. Adding insulation to older buildings is a good idea for a lot of reasons, but we must think about moisture at the same time.
Last week's column: Recycled Content in Building Products: Should You Care?
Peter Yost at BuildingGreen contributed to this week's post.
Tristan Roberts is Editorial Director at BuildingGreen, Inc., in Brattleboro, Vermont, which publishes information on green building solutions.
- Illustration: Peter Harris
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