Andyb
Member
- Messages
- 2
- Location
- South Hams
Hi,
Long lurker but first time posting as struggling to understand my options.
Our kitchen has popping gypsum plaster at the bottom of the south facing external wall and around the chimney breast. As well as this we have tiles on the floor, they are cracking in a line (across multiple tiles) and near where they are cracking the grout looks darker (so I assume wet).
Underneath the tiles is some self levelling compound, an old thin concrete slab and then earth. My assumption is that the ground under the slab is damp and the slab is likely broken (it wasn’t in good shape when the floor was installed, I know I should have sorted it back then) causing the damp/cracking tiles (they are in the middle of the floor, roughly 2m from a wall). I assume closer to the walls the damp ground is making the wall wet which is causing the popping gypsum plaster up to about 40cm as it can’t evaporate. The odd bit is this is only on the exterior and chimney breast walls, not the interior walls. There is no water coming in the chimney, as the stack doesn’t exist in the attic and is just a metal pipe which is dry, the exterior wall also doesn’t seem to be leaking, there is a protected awning, gutters are all working well and render is in good shape. It also cannot be a pipe leaking as none are recessed in the wall.
Options I see are:
1. Knock off low plaster, let dry and then lime plaster, ignore the floor until tiles are properly cracking. (This seems like a bodge that would need fixing in a few years, but is less hassle)
2. Take out the whole kitchen and pull out the floor then install a new floor and have it all lime plastered. What floor could I do, we don’t have the head room/exterior ground lever for suspended timber so the only thing I can see is limecrete, are there any other options? Could I just dig out the old slab and put in a new standard slab (though I assume this would be a bad idea).
Finally if anyone has recommendations for builders / old house damp specialists in south Devon I’d love to hear, as ideally we would get people in todo this.
Thanks
Andrew
Long lurker but first time posting as struggling to understand my options.
Our kitchen has popping gypsum plaster at the bottom of the south facing external wall and around the chimney breast. As well as this we have tiles on the floor, they are cracking in a line (across multiple tiles) and near where they are cracking the grout looks darker (so I assume wet).
Underneath the tiles is some self levelling compound, an old thin concrete slab and then earth. My assumption is that the ground under the slab is damp and the slab is likely broken (it wasn’t in good shape when the floor was installed, I know I should have sorted it back then) causing the damp/cracking tiles (they are in the middle of the floor, roughly 2m from a wall). I assume closer to the walls the damp ground is making the wall wet which is causing the popping gypsum plaster up to about 40cm as it can’t evaporate. The odd bit is this is only on the exterior and chimney breast walls, not the interior walls. There is no water coming in the chimney, as the stack doesn’t exist in the attic and is just a metal pipe which is dry, the exterior wall also doesn’t seem to be leaking, there is a protected awning, gutters are all working well and render is in good shape. It also cannot be a pipe leaking as none are recessed in the wall.
Options I see are:
1. Knock off low plaster, let dry and then lime plaster, ignore the floor until tiles are properly cracking. (This seems like a bodge that would need fixing in a few years, but is less hassle)
2. Take out the whole kitchen and pull out the floor then install a new floor and have it all lime plastered. What floor could I do, we don’t have the head room/exterior ground lever for suspended timber so the only thing I can see is limecrete, are there any other options? Could I just dig out the old slab and put in a new standard slab (though I assume this would be a bad idea).
Finally if anyone has recommendations for builders / old house damp specialists in south Devon I’d love to hear, as ideally we would get people in todo this.
Thanks
Andrew