Waterproofing (Abdichtung)
Waterproofing cannot be put right from above. If damp shows in the cellar after three years, somebody has to dig the wall out — the only question is who pays for it.
How it is billed
Vertical and horizontal waterproofing go by the square metre, tapes and fillets by the running metre, pipe penetrations by the piece, drainage by the running metre, dimpled membrane by the square metre. Excavation and backfill go by the cubic metre where they fall within your scope. Every layer is an item of its own, because each has its own material and its own time — and waterproofing is always several layers, never one. Areas and volumes are worked out in the program itself: you enter the dimensions wall by wall and zone by zone, name every measurement your own way, and the total goes into the quote as a finished item with the breakdown — you can see where the figure came from.
What disappears on paper
What disappears is the drying time. A layer has to be dry before the next one goes on, and the customer wanted the trench backfilled yesterday — those days are not a stoppage but the method, and they belong in the schedule. Preparation disappears: priming, fillets in the corners, making the masonry good behind the bricklayer. The pipe penetrations disappear — the commonest leak, and usually not a word about them in the quote. And the risk of the open trench disappears: one heavy rain sets the work back a week.
Work it out yourself
Take the last cellar. Count the days from the first layer to backfilling and subtract the ones you actually worked — the rest is process time, in which you kept an eye on the site and drove over to check, and which nobody paid you for. Add the pipe penetrations: count them and check whether they stood in the quote as an item. Multiply by the number of such jobs in a year.
Five minutes a day
A photo of every layer before the next one goes on, and a separate photo of every pipe penetration. That is the only way to show years later that the wall was sealed properly — nobody digs the proof back out of the ground. In the evening: hours, material used, the weather of the day. With waterproofing a note on the weather is no whim: bitumen has its conditions, and in a dispute those are what decide.
What the program watches for you
The warranty periods matter here more than anywhere, because the defects surface later than in any other trade — under a VOB/B contract the program will not accept less than four years, under a works contract governed by the German civil code less than five, and it keeps the dates on the job rather than in your head. When you work for a construction company, it sets the reverse charge under §13b and watches the §48b certificate. Material issued to a job sits on that job — with waterproofing that counts, because consumption per square metre is stated on the data sheet and somebody will do the sums if there is a complaint. Additional work is kept as a variation with the date it was announced.
At the end of the year
Material, plant hire, hours, kilometres — all recorded against the jobs. The annual accounts and the VAT returns read finished figures, and invoices under the reverse charge land in the right boxes by themselves.
What matters is entering things regularly — a photo of every layer is cheaper than one foundation dug out again.
