external stairs

[angrybird]

Here I am again picking your brains about an external staircase that spans the outside wall of my dining room.I decided to take the plasterboard off the dining room walls to find the root of the damp problem, where i found beautiful stone walls covered in thick mortar,it has taken me 3 days to remove 3/4 of the mortar from 1 of the stone walls as i dont want to mark the face of the stone but I have also realised how wet the stone is especially after all the rain we have had in Wales!
could I tank the stairs? any other help please ?

(the old paint has been removed from stairs)

 

[Zebra]

Someone more expert will no doubt be able to give a better answer, but isn't tanking applied internally, i.e. it would be to the interior wall of the dining room, not to the stairs? This doesn't sound like a good plan since tanking traps the moisture in the walls, which is why it is not good as a long term fix where walls need to breathe.
Where is ground level in that picture? At the top of the stairs? Is your entire dining room underground?
It does look like a tricky one, but I can't imagine how any impermeable layer could be applied to the stairs to solve the problem.
Edit - however, it perhaps looks worse than normal because of the unusual amount of rain that we've had just recently. Once you've removed all the mortar (was this cement mortar by the way? That will be trapping damp in the walls and also making the problem worse than it is) why not let the whole lot dry out over the summer and have another look.
Sorry if I'm telling you things you already know, but as I've been patiently taught on here in response to my panicked cries, time and patience can be the key, rather than drastic measures. It can be a case of trying one thing, giving it time to dry, then if that hasn't worked trying another. How thick are the walls? The standard rule of thumb as I understand is a month of drying time per inch of wall, so after you've removed the stuff you're removing, if the walls need time to dry, that could take many months, with no need for tanking or other measures.

 

[angrybird]

Hi Zebra thanks for your quick reply,the stairs are ground level and I am lead to believe that the stairs lead up to an old cottage in the garden( no longer there) at the moment they lead up to a blank wall on a sunroom (not built by me!)They are part of the old house so I am reluctant to pull them down but they do seem to be causing the damp in the dining room walls especially since ive been removing the cement render that was coating the original internal stone walls.The house hasn't been lived in for the last 10 months so there has been no heating, I have just purchased a Rayburn solid fuel cooker for the central heating so I am hoping this might dry the house out.
This is my first renovation project so I guess I do seem to panic alot but any help or advise is always welcome.

 

[Keithj]

May not be relevant, but we had a beautiful old cottage half way up a Welsh mountain. When we bought it, it was riddled with damp. Over a period of about five years we (or rather, our builder neighbour) cured it completely.

The simple process was to find where the water was getting in, and stop it. If it can't be stopped, make sure it can get out again easily. The cellar was a bit of a challenge, but we won there too. We (and the invaluable Mr Jones) refused to tank it: we piped the water running past the side of the house from the (higher) road in front to lead it onto the garden and thence down the hill.

I was amazed at the amount of old newspaper we found packed into porch ceilings and the like to absorb rain that leaked in! Fixing the slates was much more effective.

As others say all over this forum: look for where it's getting in, fix that, and then be patient in giving it time to dry out before assuming that didn't work.

 

[Zebra]

So, if the bottom of the stairs is at ground level, and they're built against the outside of your dining room wall, what is under them - what are they built on? Soil? Brick? Stone? Or don't you know? I'm only wondering if it's a porous or a free-draining material, i.e. whether it will hold moisture. I had soil against the back wall of my house which caused damp to come through, particularly in one area. When I removed it, I found that the soil in that area was very claggy clayey soil, and therefore held more moisture. This might not be very helpful to you however, if you're keeping your stairs, and I doubt they'd be built on anything like that anyway.
I also have a bread oven with a solid base which is filled with stones and soil, and this used to cause damp to come through the brick wall. When I first removed the cement render - must be about a year ago now, it was stinky, and almost running with water, but now I think of it I haven't seen any damp there for a while.
It might be a bit encouraging to think that if nobody has thought to tank your dining room wall before, it can't really have been all that wet before they put the plasterboard on.
But if the house hasn't been lived in for 10 months and you've just taken the cement render off, it's hardly surprising it's wet, and will need time to find its equilibrium again. I do know how you feel though. I'll see if I can find a similar thread on here a while back where I was having a panic about damp walls and was told the same message about giving it time. It may offer some reassurance!..

 

[angrybird]

Thanks zebra, the house is built on Bedrock and is 1100 feet above sea level. The previous owners seem to have had the idea of covering the walls in anything that might make them waterproof eg. in the upstairs lounge walls were covered in waterproof tile adhesive masked by plasterboard or in the dining room 3 inch thick cement mortar covered by plasterboard I could fill a page on "Bodged jobs" but I would'nt want to bore you.There is a room at the back of the stairs this used to be the old Blacksmiths but as yet I haven't had a "dig" in there to see whats under the floor.

 

[Zebra]

If it were me - as indeed it was a year ago - I would remove all of that nasty stuff and give the house a chance to breathe. Mine too had impermeable materials over every inch of surface inside and out. I filled skip after skip with it all, panicked many times about damp, had the reassurance of those on here to give it time to dry (if it's of any interest at all, see here http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12471&start=45) and now it's much much better.