Above-Grade Waterproofing for Akron Mill Conversions, Commercial Buildings & Condominiums
Above-Grade Waterproofing Specialists for Akron, OH Buildings
Akron’s commercial building stock was put up for rubber, not for water. The plants and offices raised between 1910 and 1930 carry long runs of steel sash glazing, monitor and clerestory roof geometry, and parapet lines that go on and on, which leaves an unusual amount of perimeter to keep sealed. Water almost never arrives through the middle of a membrane on a building like that. It arrives at the wall-to-roof transition, at the glazing surround, under a coping joint, and along the seam where one decade of construction was joined to another. Layer on 41.6 inches of precipitation spread across 160 days a year, with freeze expansion working every open joint from December through March, and one failed transition detail can wet several floors of finishes before anybody traces it back.
Presto Restoration handles above-grade commercial waterproofing for Akron owners, boards and property managers, on the converted mill and warehouse buildings along East Market Street and South Main Street as readily as on newer offices out toward Copley East and Wallhaven. Our approach begins with restoration rather than caulk. We clean and repair the substrate first and waterproof it second, because sealant bonded to a spalling brick face or a delaminating concrete spandrel simply fails again on schedule. The work spans breathable masonry repellents, silicone and elastomeric coatings, glass and wet glazing, and the sealing of movement joints and cracks. Presto also makes its own products, among them Glass Defender for glazing and Leach Stop Protection for precast panels. We work above grade only, not on foundations or below-grade waterproofing, and naming that boundary early saves everybody a wasted call.
OUR COMMERCIAL WATERPROOFING SERVICES IN AKRON
Presto’s above-grade waterproofing work in Akron falls into two groups. Core systems close the envelope at the joints, glazing lines and wall surfaces where water is genuinely crossing it. Specialized restoration-waterproofing services clean and repair a surface before protecting it, which is the only order of operations that produces a lasting result on century-old industrial brick, precast and exposed concrete.
Core Waterproofing Services
Akron’s rubber-era plants and concrete-frame factories were built long and wide, so a single elevation can run movement joints from one end of the block to the other, and every addition bolted on since adds another set of joints at the seam between old and new. Sealant in those joints has the hardest job on the building: hold a bond through winter contraction and summer expansion while the joint itself keeps opening and closing. Failure is rarely a tidy split. Water tracks sideways inside the joint and surfaces indoors well away from the breach, which is why guessing at the location wastes money. We cut the spent material out and reseal in high-movement silicone or polyurethane, chosen against the movement that joint actually sees rather than whatever fit the gun last time. On campus-scale Akron buildings we sequence joint work elevation by elevation, so one phase is closed out and warrantied before the next opens.
Glazing on an Akron industrial conversion is not a modest window count. One mill elevation can carry more steel sash than an entire floor plate of a modern office, and each light sits in a frame that catches mineral-laden runoff off the brick and concrete above it. Ignored, those deposits etch into the surface and no cleaning schedule brings the clarity back. That is the job Glass Defender, our own glass treatment, was made for: it leaves a hydrophobic layer the deposits cannot key into, so rain carries them down the light rather than baking them onto it, and the cleaning cycle lengthens. On restored buildings in the Bowery District and the East End, treated glazing is what keeps finished work looking finished through a second and third winter.
Parapet tops, coping lines, ledges and the low-slope shoulder where a monitor roof meets a wall are the details that hold water on Akron buildings, and they are the details a brush-grade coating gives up on first. Silicone coating systems suit them because they cure to a seamless monolithic film bonded straight to the substrate, with no laps or terminations to unzip. Silicone also tolerates what an Akron February does to a coating: water standing in a shallow depression, freezing overnight, gone by mid-afternoon, back again the next day. With 68 clear days in an average year the application window here is narrow, so we schedule silicone work around real drying conditions instead of a date on a bar chart, and we protect the green film before the next precipitation day reaches it.
Historic steel sash and modern storefront share one weak point, and it is the perimeter seal tying each light of glass to its frame. On Akron’s converted industrial buildings the running length of that seal is enormous, and once it hardens and lets go, water enters the wall cavity at head height and works down through the assembly before it stains a ceiling two or three floors below. Wet glazing addresses it at the source. We strip the failed material, prepare both the frame and the glass edge, and gun in fresh high-performance silicone until the perimeter reads continuous again. Presto reglazes punched openings, ribbon windows, storefront and curtain wall alike, and on mill conversions we treat the original steel sash surrounds the same way, documented and warrantied across the whole building rather than one elevation at a time.
Stucco, EIFS and concrete walls crack, and in Akron a crack like that holds water until the temperature drops and it freezes. An elastomeric coating answers that by refusing to go brittle. A cured elastomeric film runs about ten times the thickness of a paint coat and stays elastic for life, so it stretches across a moving crack instead of tearing along it. That elasticity is the entire point in a market where a wall face can cross the freezing mark and come back again inside one day for months on end. Our systems also stay breathable, which matters on a masonry wall that only gets a narrow drying window between precipitation days, and the factory color and texture options are wide enough to match an appearance a review board has already approved.
Akron’s industrial walls are thick multi-wythe brick laid up in soft lime mortar, which means the wall was designed to pass moisture back out through its joints. That one fact rules out a whole family of products. A film-forming sealer on a wall like this traps water behind the face, and the next freeze does the damage the sealer was bought to prevent. Presto uses clear penetrating repellents instead, silane and siloxane chemistry that soaks in, renders the substrate hydrophobic, and leaves it vapor-open. Appearance does not change, which matters on buildings inside Akron’s seven National Register districts. Rain beads and runs off rather than soaking in, efflorescence streaking slows, and the treatment keeps working through Ohio winters.
Specialized Restoration-Waterproofing
Presto’s second group of services exists because sealing a dirty or deteriorated surface only buys a season. We clean and restore first, then waterproof, and the finished work both reads right and lasts. On Akron’s rubber-era stock the order matters far more than it would on a building put up ten years ago, because the surfaces in question are precast, exposed concrete and architectural metal that have been weathering since the 1910s and 1920s.
Precast concrete panels hold water-soluble minerals inside them, and moisture traveling through the panel brings them out to the face and leaves them on whatever happens to sit underneath: glass, metal trim, coping, the next panel down. The staining looks permanent and effectively is, because washing lifts the deposit without touching the cause, so it returns within weeks. Leach Stop Protection is aimed at the cause instead. The existing staining comes off first, then the panel itself is treated so the minerals stop migrating out of it, which ends the cycle rather than resetting it. The Akron property managers who call about this are usually the ones who have already paid to have the same windows cleaned three times.
Architectural metal on an Akron building, curtain wall framing, mullions, coping, panel systems and Alucobond composite, takes its punishment from water standing in joints through a freeze and from de-icing chemistry carried up off the street and the deck. Replacement is the expensive answer to that. We put a clear protective coating over the metal instead, which halts the corrosion without hiding the original factory finish, and that finish is frequently the whole reason an owner does not want the panel replaced. The clear coats bond to the existing surface and keep moisture and chloride off the substrate underneath, adding real service life to metal that is otherwise sound. On campus-scale square footage, where panel replacement runs straight into lead times and phasing, this is often the difference between a maintenance line item and a capital project.
Our Above-Grade Waterproofing Process in Akron
Five phases, in the same order, on every Akron project we take. The sequence exists so that we find where water is genuinely entering before anything gets specified, and so the systems we install are matched both to your building and to the installation window Akron’s weather is willing to give us.
Envelope & Perimeter Survey
We survey every above-grade system on the building, sealed joints, coatings, glazing surrounds, copings, wall-to-roof transitions and exposed masonry, with every failure point photographed and pinned to a location.
Diagnostic Testing
Water crossing the envelope at a coping or a glazing head can surface three floors down. Controlled water testing, moisture readings and staged tracing separate the real entry point from the stain it produced.
Scope & Specification
We specify systems to your actual substrates, silicones, elastomerics and traffic coatings, in quantified line items, and our PM team carries the Summit County and City of Akron submissions plus tenant coordination.
Waterproofing Installation
Crews install by rope access, swing stage or lift as the elevation dictates, to manufacturer specification, with quality control holds at each phase and a full photographic record of the work.
Project Closeout & Warranty
At closeout you receive the whole package: the warranty, data sheets for every product used, photography from before and after, and a maintenance calendar built around an Akron winter so the new systems reach their full service life.
Seeing Water Come Through Your Akron Building?
Joint sealant pulling away, staining below a glazing head, a wall-to-roof transition that leaks every thaw. Tell us which of those you have on the building and we will say which system addresses it and in what order the work should run.
Call 1-800-785-9927 or Request A Free Quote.
Why Akron Property Managers Choose Presto for Above-Grade Waterproofing
Presto Restoration has spent more than 25 years on commercial building envelopes. In Akron what that buys you is fluency in one particular kind of stock: rubber-era mill and concrete-frame plants with more perimeter than field, additions from four different decades meeting at joints nobody ever detailed, and square footage large enough that the work has to be phased. Akron sets no periodic exterior wall examination requirement, so no ordinance puts a calendar on your envelope. What section 190.602 of the Codified Ordinances does instead is fix a condition the wall has to be in at all times, across exterior surfaces, cornices, copings, canopies, trim and anchored elements, and it bites on the day a defect becomes observable rather than on a filing date. That is a sound argument for closing a joint in the year you first notice it.
The Support Network Behind Our Akron, OH Waterproofing
Looking after a building envelope in Akron and Summit County takes more than one crew and one truck. Restoration is one half of the job and steady upkeep between projects is the other, so Presto coordinates with specialized regional divisions that cover the second half.
For day-to-day building care and localized facility work, property managers can go straight to our sister divisions:
Building Restoration Akron: Handles targeted masonry and exterior repairs on mid-rise and converted industrial buildings.
Building Maintenance Akron: Covers the scheduled preventative maintenance that keeps sealant, coating and drainage details working through a full winter.
Building Services Akron: The resource for everyday commercial building support across the wider Akron area.
Recent Waterproofing Projects in Ohio
OHIO PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHTS
Below are Ohio projects where Presto sealed movement joints, reglazed openings and coated wall and deck surfaces to keep water on the outside of the building.
Akron Commercial Waterproofing FAQs
What service life should I expect from sealant on an Akron elevation?
Manufacturers rate high-movement sealants at 15 to 25 years, and on a sheltered elevation in Akron that is roughly what you get. On the exposed details, parapet copings, wall-to-roof transitions and the heads of steel sash openings, plan on less, because those joints go into a freeze already wet and are worked again by every thaw. Ten to fifteen years is the realistic planning figure there. Akron sets no ordinance interval for looking at an exterior wall, so the schedule belongs to the owner. Most of the buildings we work on get an envelope review about every five years and are recaulked elevation by elevation rather than all at once, which spreads the cost and keeps the worst details from running all the way to failure.
Where does waterproofing stop and water damage restoration begin?
They are different trades doing different work at different moments. Water damage restoration deals with what happened inside after the water arrived: drying, demolition, replacing finishes. Waterproofing is exterior work that stops the arrival, and on Akron’s converted industrial buildings that means the movement joints, glazing perimeters, transitions and wall surfaces where water is actually crossing the envelope. Presto works the exterior side of that line. Closing the entry point once is nearly always cheaper than drying the same suite of offices out every spring.
Do the tenants have to move out while you work?
Almost never. The East End and the Bowery District are full of buildings carrying apartments, offices, medical suites and retail at the same time, and waterproofing there is a phasing exercise before it is anything else. We work by elevation and by drop, reach most elevations on rope and swing stage, which keeps staging off the pavement, and hold the loud operations out of the hours that matter to residents and staff. The schedule is published in advance so building management can say which wall is live on which day. On a large complex each phase is closed out and warrantied before the next one opens.
Is an elastomeric coating just expensive paint?
They are not the same class of product. A coat of paint is a decorative finish that cures hard, so it splits at the first place the wall moves. An elastomeric is a waterproofing membrane you can see: about ten times the thickness of a paint coat, permanently elastic, and able to span a hairline crack by stretching over it rather than tearing along it. In Akron that property earns its cost, because a wall face here can sit wet and then drop below freezing overnight, again and again, for months. Water held in a crack behind a rigid film is precisely how a small crack becomes a large one.
Which of these problems cannot wait for warm weather?
Look for dark streaking on the wall below a coping or a window head, sealant that has released from one side of a joint and left a gap, white efflorescence bleeding out of brick or concrete, brick faces spalling while the mortar joints beside them look sound, rust staining or delamination at a concrete spandrel or slab edge, and damp or blistering paint indoors near an exterior wall. The spalling brick pattern is worth calling out in Akron specifically: it usually means an old lime-mortar wall was repointed in hard mortar, and moisture now has nowhere to go except out through the face of the brick. Any of these is a reason to call rather than wait for the next thaw. Call 1-800-785-9927, or use Request A Quote and send photographs of the elevation that is giving you trouble.
Who issues the permits, and does Presto handle the submissions in Akron?
Yes, our project management team carries the paperwork, and the useful thing to know about Akron is how early it has to start. Two packets go in rather than one. The Summit County Department of Building Standards holds commercial building permitting here, following the 2009 consolidation of the municipal department into it, and any job within the city limits is filed with the City too. Put a locally designated building into that and a further step goes ahead of both, because no permit can issue until the Commission has granted its certificate. Sealant and coating work is weather-bound in this market, so we get submissions moving while the ground is still frozen instead of waiting for the first dry week. Where a building is registered vacant under Chapter 154, envelope repairs are usually written into the required vacant building plan and we work to that plan. Nationwide general liability and workers’ compensation cover is carried on every Presto job.
Other Building Restoration Services in Akron
Stop the Water at the Perimeter, Not at the Ceiling
A joint that has let go is cheap to reseal and expensive to leave, because the price of the repair does not climb anywhere near as fast as the price of the finishes underneath it. Send us photographs and a floor location and we will tell you what we think is happening on that wall.
Call us today at 1-800-785-9927 or click Request A Quote.