Waterproofing in Pallikaranai and Medavakkam

WATREX works on houses and apartment blocks across Pallikaranai, Medavakkam, Madipakkam, Jalladianpet and Kovilambakkam. Much of this area was built on the edges of the Pallikaranai marsh, and the ground still behaves like it. Water sits close to the surface, the soil is soft, and buildings show it in their sumps, their walls and their ground floors.

Building near the marsh

The Pallikaranai marsh is one of the last large wetlands inside Chennai. Over the past few decades, layouts and apartment blocks spread right up to its edges. In the monsoon the marsh swells, the water table rises with it, and the ground under nearby homes stays wet for weeks.

That brings two kinds of trouble. The first is water from below: sumps that fill with ground water, lift pits that flood, and ground-floor walls that draw up moisture and salt. The second is movement. Soft, wet soil lets parts of a building settle unevenly, and the strain shows as cracks where brick walls meet beams and columns. Those cracks then let rain in from the outside.

Is that crack serious?

Most cracks we see here are hairline cracks at the joint between brickwork and concrete. They let water in but do not threaten the structure, and they are sealed during sidewall waterproofing. Cracks wider than a few millimetres, cracks that keep growing, diagonal cracks near beam ends, or doors that start to stick are different. Those need a structural engineer before any waterproofing, and we will tell you so plainly.

What we fix most here

• Sump waterproofing to keep marsh-side ground water out
• PU injection grouting for lift pits and leaking joints
• Sidewall waterproofing for cracked, damp outer walls
• Epoxy injection grouting for structural cracks, after an engineer has checked them

Neighbourhoods we cover

Pallikaranai, Medavakkam, Madipakkam, Jalladianpet, Kovilambakkam, Nanmangalam and Keelkattalai, plus Velachery to the north and Sholinganallur to the east.

Common questions