Electro Pulse System - Works or Not?

The technical translation into English is lousy, but I think it is some sort of ionisation barrier that literally stops (or removes) water/moisture entering (or within) a protected building using only 5-10W per 100m2 area.

Are you able to give us a better explanation as from what I can see it is either a scam product (like the ion barrier for preventing your car from rusting), or a case of really exaggerated marketing bordering on a scam product.

Hmm, seems like a very, very poor application of 0.05 W/M². What is the carbon footprint for something like this. Seems like you could come up with something more passive and environmentally friendly.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5755945.PN.&OS=PN/5755945&RS=PN/5755945

Hi,

did you look at the related US patent? Link above.

RHABE

The link doesn't work

If the patent search link doesn't work then try

www.USPTO.gov

then goto: patents

then patent number search

then search for no. 5755945

RHABE

Thanks for the link.

US Patent 5,755,945 - Method for dehydrating capillary materials

The present invention relates to a method for dehydrating capillary materials such as moist walls and/or floors of a building structure of masonry or concrete through the principle of electro-osmosis by applying pulsating DC voltage of a specific pulse pattern to primary electrode means embedded in said structure, said primary electrode means forming anode means, and secondary electrode means embedded in the ground outside the structure and forming cathode means to be interactive with anode means, said pulsating voltage having a pulse pattern with a total pulse period T, comprised of a positive pulse of duration T+, a negative pulse of duration T-, and a neutral period or pause of duration Tp.

Sooooooo, put simply you stick an electrode (lets say a nail) into your concrete basement wall and another into your lawn on the other side of the basement wall. Apply the magic pulsating DC waveform <sigh> and the moisture inside the concrete blocks is sucked out into your lawn using the principle of electro-osmosis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_osmosis

This sounds like another case of greatly exaggerated promises based on known principles whose small effect is being misapplied thru either lack of proper understanding of principles (and poor or no testing conducted to prove said fantastic claims) or just plain fraud.

This is not the only building electro-osmosis device either.

http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/ELECTRICAL_DAMP_PROOF_COURSE.htm

http://www.dampproofingireland.net/ElectroOsmosis.htm

I am going to leave this to the materials/chemistry engineers. I am willing to say that the principle sounds good, but I have yet to see any real scientific papers or proof that this is effective in the case of buildings (which are a lot different to plants and fuel cell proton exchange membranes) in not only removing moisture from concrete and masonry walls but also providing a barrier. The whole point of the principle is that a conductive path must exist for electro-osmosis to be able to occur, and I fail to see how that will happen when the porous materials start to dry out or is not uniformly "wet", especially when such a low voltage is used and uniform conductive paths cannot be guaranteed thru said porous material (especially when you take into account that the porous building materials are in brick form with a mortar or similar barrier between them).

Any materials/chemistry engineers out there able to shed some light on the viability and limitations of the electro-osmosis principle with regard to concrete building blocks?

Thank you for your comment,

This is very interesting, the theory seem to make sense, a few patents there are building on the same thing, that is the osmosis pressure and negative ions to pump the water out. But I would like to here from someone who has an experience of this system in action. I question the small power consumption of this system, I think it is likely that this uses more power than rated, to dry the walls.

I think it is likely that this uses more power than rated, to dry the walls.

Power of the order to use a 'ditch witch"? I am considering when to accomplish same by digging the trench along side the foundation and laying tile drain. It is the "effective" method. I've found the ditch witch machine has an off-set digging arm allowing ease of digging a trench parallel to the foundation wall.

The hi-tech part will be sealing the outer wall and applying insulation.

could maybe work for some time, but a machine like this does not exists in my hometown, so it would be to expensive to arrange one for this job. + to make a drain pipe properly I would need to insert a layer of rocks over the pipes, and then sand over the rocks, otherwise the drain pipes would be blocked by the mud before the walls start to dry, so I thing a machine like this could not do the job properly.

You could use the regular backhoe type machine.

You could wrap the pipe with landscape cloth which will prevent the mud from entering the pipe but not restrict water.

Or you could jackhammer the inside basement floor around the perimeter wall and lay drain pipe plus a sump pump. A nice inside job and no disturbing the lawn.

I recently watched a program on Mega-Projects or something like that...

They were installing a system like that into a concrete bridge that was decaying badly.

Maybe it was on Great inventions... anyway, they say expect it to work well!

We'll see! LOL

Vito