Balcony Waterproofing

Professional Balcony Waterproofing in Pune & PCMC

Prevent rainwater penetration, cracks, seepage, and leakage from balconies with professionally applied waterproofing systems.

Leakproofs by Betterwork has been carrying out this work across Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad for more than 10 years. Every job starts with a free deep-scan inspection, because the point where water appears is very often not the point where it enters.

Common problems we find

A balcony is the smallest waterproofing job on a building and one of the most frequent leaks, because almost everything about it is a detail rather than a field. There is very little flat area and a great deal of edge.

• The door threshold. The finished balcony floor should sit clearly below the internal floor, with the membrane turned up behind the frame. Every time a balcony is re-tiled over the old tiles, the floor level rises. Two re-tilings and the balcony is level with — or above — the room, and rain simply runs inside. This is the most common balcony complaint in Pune’s older apartment stock and it is not fixed by any coating.
• Railing post penetrations. Posts cored or grouted straight through the slab put a hole through the waterproofing at the point of maximum movement. Rust jacking then splits the concrete around each post.
• The cantilever’s fixed edge. A cantilever slab flexes most where it meets the building. That is where the crack forms, and it is directly above the room below.
• The drainage outlet. Many balconies have one small outlet, often set flush or slightly proud of the screed, so water ponds instead of draining. Some have no outlet at all and are drained by the door being open.
• The soffit below. Staining, blistering paint and eventually spalling concrete with exposed reinforcement on the underside of the balcony above — the visible symptom that brings most people to us.
• Condensate and washing water. AC drain lines discharging onto the slab and routine washing keep the surface wet far more often than the rain does.

Because the area is small, the temptation is to treat a balcony as a paint job. The failures above are all geometry and detailing, and none of them respond to a coating.

How we treat it

We start by measuring levels, because on a balcony the levels decide whether the job is possible at all.

Survey. Threshold height relative to the internal floor, fall from the building line to the outlet, outlet invert, condition of the soffit below, and the state of every railing fixing. If the finished level is already above the internal floor, we say so at inspection and quote for demolition back to the structural slab — because no other approach works, and quoting a coating in that situation is selling a repeat visit.

Preparation. Existing tiles and screed removed to the structural slab. Corroded railing fixings cut out, the concrete around them broken back past the corrosion, reinforcement treated and reinstated in a repair mortar. Cracks at the fixed edge cut out and filled. A coved fillet formed at every wall junction and at the parapet. The outlet is lowered or reformed so it sits at the lowest point.

Systems. A screed laid to a positive fall of roughly 1 in 100 toward the outlet, then a cementitious or PU tanking layer taken up the walls at least 150 mm above the finished floor, turned up behind the door frame at the threshold, and dressed into the body of the outlet rather than stopped at its rim. Railing posts are re-fixed onto the finished waterproofing using base plates on a sealed pad wherever the design allows, rather than cored back through the new membrane. Tiles are then bedded over the membrane on a separating layer.

The soffit. The underside is repaired after the balcony above is watertight, not before — patching a stained soffit while water is still arriving is cosmetic and it comes back.

Verification. The outlet is plugged and the balcony flooded for 24 hours with the soffit and the room below under observation before tiling. Leakproofs by Betterwork issues the written ten-year warranty on the treated area once that test passes.

Material options

As an authorized Dr. Fixit applicator and an Asian Paints and Birla Opus Paint partner, we can apply the system that best suits your property, budget and expected durability.

10-year warranty

Eligible projects are water-tested before handover and covered by a written 10-year warranty on the treated area.