Hi All,
A history lesson on my house and then to the question. It's about damp.
Detached house, built 1894 with cavity walls.
One of the downstairs rooms at the front of the house has a crawl space about 3 feet deep and airbricks to ventilate, all other floors are solid.
Another room (kitchen) was added we believe in the 1920's also with solid floor.
Foundations/walls look like 8 rows of red bricks (bottom 2 rows stepping out from others) on this is a row of 4 blue bricks and then red bricks on top of these for the rest of the house.
Only the bottom 6 bricks are below ground so above ground are 2 red bricks and then the 4 blue bricks (I've always thought this was a bit odd, why not use blue all the way down?).
Blue bricks are at inside floor level and there is a slate DPC.
When I bought the house 10 years ago I was aware of a damp problem and in my ignorance sort advice from the local jokers who came and dug up my floors laid a DPM and injected my walls (including the blue bricks - was that a waste of time?)
Damp problems eventually manifested themselves again and over the past 2 years we've had a major refurb (even had Rideout to have a look and they were very good discovering causes) and in total we found:
1. Some of the outside ground levels too high.
2. Leaking gutters by kitchen and lounge.
3. Leaking dishwasher feed pipe in kitchen.
4. Leaking soakaway drain outside lounge
5. Leaking water pipe in bathroom
6. Poorly positioned pipes exiting into kitchen drain meaning half the water actually went down wall instead of drain.
7. Poorly positioned pipes exiting into bathroom drain meaning half the water actually went down wall instead of drain.
8. Plaster on interior walls was down to the floor thus breaching the DPC.
All these problems are now fixed and we set about getting the house looking gorgeous inside and finally finished about 3 weeks ago.
About a week after everything was finished we noticed the plaster on one of the kitchen walls (the one that had the poorly positioned drain pipes and the leaking dishwasher pipe) was damp to the touch and the cupboards on that wall were starting to smell. The water pipes run behind these cupboards.
On no, not again.
I have had all the kitchen cupboards out and established nothing is leaking behind them.
We have examined the mains riser to the house and this is not leaking.
We have examined the drains and they are not leaking.
SO WHERE THE HELL IS THIS DAMP COMING FROM????????
Outside the kitchen wall was a concrete and slab patio thing. Having dug up a row of theses slabs around the kitchen wall and gone down to the foundations this weekend looking for clues, the things I noticed were that between the slab and concrete water was trapped.
Once the concrete was dug up the underside looked wet.
The dirt underneath the concrete was no damper than you'd expect it to be, but it was full of hardcore such as broken blue bricks, roof tiles, bits of old drain, big stones, etc.
Having got all of this rubbish out I could see the foundations appear to be resting on what appears to be a brown/yellow clay.
So i poured down some water and 8 hours later it was still there (it had gone this morning), so at that level anyway (on that particular bit of wall) it doesn't seem to drain away very quickly.
Could this be part of the problem?
Should (as Rideout suggested I should consider - but not a definate do) I be thinking about a French drain or could there be anything else?
Could it just be with all the water soaking into the kitchen over the last few years until we fixed them, everything is saturated and needs time to dry out?
Apologies for such a long post and if you read this far, thanks!
Cheers!
Stu.
A history lesson on my house and then to the question. It's about damp.
Detached house, built 1894 with cavity walls.
One of the downstairs rooms at the front of the house has a crawl space about 3 feet deep and airbricks to ventilate, all other floors are solid.
Another room (kitchen) was added we believe in the 1920's also with solid floor.
Foundations/walls look like 8 rows of red bricks (bottom 2 rows stepping out from others) on this is a row of 4 blue bricks and then red bricks on top of these for the rest of the house.
Only the bottom 6 bricks are below ground so above ground are 2 red bricks and then the 4 blue bricks (I've always thought this was a bit odd, why not use blue all the way down?).
Blue bricks are at inside floor level and there is a slate DPC.
When I bought the house 10 years ago I was aware of a damp problem and in my ignorance sort advice from the local jokers who came and dug up my floors laid a DPM and injected my walls (including the blue bricks - was that a waste of time?)
Damp problems eventually manifested themselves again and over the past 2 years we've had a major refurb (even had Rideout to have a look and they were very good discovering causes) and in total we found:
1. Some of the outside ground levels too high.
2. Leaking gutters by kitchen and lounge.
3. Leaking dishwasher feed pipe in kitchen.
4. Leaking soakaway drain outside lounge
5. Leaking water pipe in bathroom
6. Poorly positioned pipes exiting into kitchen drain meaning half the water actually went down wall instead of drain.
7. Poorly positioned pipes exiting into bathroom drain meaning half the water actually went down wall instead of drain.
8. Plaster on interior walls was down to the floor thus breaching the DPC.
All these problems are now fixed and we set about getting the house looking gorgeous inside and finally finished about 3 weeks ago.
About a week after everything was finished we noticed the plaster on one of the kitchen walls (the one that had the poorly positioned drain pipes and the leaking dishwasher pipe) was damp to the touch and the cupboards on that wall were starting to smell. The water pipes run behind these cupboards.
On no, not again.
I have had all the kitchen cupboards out and established nothing is leaking behind them.
We have examined the mains riser to the house and this is not leaking.
We have examined the drains and they are not leaking.
SO WHERE THE HELL IS THIS DAMP COMING FROM????????
Outside the kitchen wall was a concrete and slab patio thing. Having dug up a row of theses slabs around the kitchen wall and gone down to the foundations this weekend looking for clues, the things I noticed were that between the slab and concrete water was trapped.
Once the concrete was dug up the underside looked wet.
The dirt underneath the concrete was no damper than you'd expect it to be, but it was full of hardcore such as broken blue bricks, roof tiles, bits of old drain, big stones, etc.
Having got all of this rubbish out I could see the foundations appear to be resting on what appears to be a brown/yellow clay.
So i poured down some water and 8 hours later it was still there (it had gone this morning), so at that level anyway (on that particular bit of wall) it doesn't seem to drain away very quickly.
Could this be part of the problem?
Should (as Rideout suggested I should consider - but not a definate do) I be thinking about a French drain or could there be anything else?
Could it just be with all the water soaking into the kitchen over the last few years until we fixed them, everything is saturated and needs time to dry out?
Apologies for such a long post and if you read this far, thanks!
Cheers!
Stu.
