Waterproofing installation for a luxury hotel during busy season
Hotel Sofitel
Redwood City
Due to renovations with numerous leaks and damage to interior finishes, the Hotel Sofitel’s building envelope was compromised.
If you are considering upgrades to the interior of your building, make sure the building envelope (exterior) is intact and doing its job of keeping water on the outside; otherwise, your new finishes will get damaged and need to be redone.
While not at full capacity, the hotel was in service, so all repairs had to be performed with the needs of a luxury hotel and their guests in mind.
With careful planning and coordination with the hotel and project management team, this project was completed on time, on budget, and with no complaints from hotel guests.
What We Did
Coated over 75,000 sf of EIFS wall finish
Replaced 38,000 linear feet of sealant at window perimeters and floorline expansion joints
Repaired numerous punctures and cracks in the EIFS finish
Performed local repairs of concrete spalls at floorline slab edges
Coated doors, rails, and other site metal with an industrial metal coating.
Project Details
Depending on the type of exterior finishes, new caulking and coating are a large part of the exterior waterproofing system and should be inspected regularly and maintained. For this project, a spec was written to replace the caulking at all expansion joints and window perimeters and replace the aging rubber gaskets with a silicone wetseal.
Replacing sealant at window perimeters and expansion joints on an EIFS building takes great care and a light touch to avoid damaging the EIFS reinforcing mesh just under the topcoat and first layer of basecoat. This was the most time-consuming part of each of the 20+ swingstage drops at the Hotel Sofitel.
As always, making sure the substrate, including any sealants, is sound is the first step. Damaged EIFS locations were repaired as well. After all of these repairs were completed, the walls were given a good wash, the windows were masked, and two coats of BASF elastomeric were applied. This was typical for each drop. Pull tests were performed at regular intervals to make sure the sealants and coating were performing as intended.
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