Selected problems of protection of historic buildings against the rainwater and the groundwater

Abstract

The paper presents selected problems in the selection of the state of the art modern civil engineering solutions for drying moisture or wet, in particular parts of the underground structures of the brick historic buildings. The repair works of the immobile cultural heritage civil engineering objects require the appropriate choice of the design solution. These should be achieved by obtaining the assumed effects in the form of the effectiveness of repairs regarding all possible measures of protection of the cultural heritage buildings. Another key issue of the analysis of the causes of moisture formation in underground masonry structures is the necessity of consideration of the historic character of these buildings. Based on authors' extensive experience and expert knowledge, a range of diagnostics process as well as the assessment of the causes of the moisture problems of historic buildings for several selected cases was proposed. Moisture is transferred from the outside of the building to the basement interior by four mechanisms liquid water flow, capillary suction, vapor diffusion and air movement. The variety of the different mechanisms of moisture transfer, especially regarding buildings of cultural heritage implies that the selection of the most suitable system solution for solving moisture problem is the most crucial and a key issue in a specific case.