External Wall Water ingress.

[Ricardobles123]

Hi All,

To start off with weve been slowly rennovating a detached home built very early 1900s (i believe 1902)
This house has a solid sandstone front wall and gable wall are cavity walls.

We recently had the old roof which was in disrepair replaced. Yesterday we discovered we have several leaks/damp spots on one of the gable walls. Roofer came out and inspected the loft/roof from the inside and out and stated he sees no issues/ I checked myself and from the inside there is no visible moisture where the roof is concerned (joists/ridge boards etc) Are all bone dry on the inside. He advised it could be a issue with the roughcast. I have a number of videos but unable to upload videos to the thread. The example picture is from inside the dining room/living looking at the chimney and damp spots on gable wall. (for reference the chimney stack was removed and roofed during above mentioned roof replacemen. Apologies for the scatter brained nature of this post. But im at my wits end with this both mentally and financially.

Really looking for advice for anyone has experienced anything similiar as this amount of water ingress is concerning and needs sorted soon. Just want to make the most cost/time effective moves forward so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

 

[fernicarry]

The wind and rain yesterday saturated our gable wall giving rise to a few trickles down the fire flues on that side. I'm pretty sure the root cause is the pointing on that wall which is cement and quite badly cracked in places as I've been all round the houses with the chimney stacks and roof which like you all appear to be sound. The fire flues being closer to the surface of the wall tend to be the first place you see water ingress if there are any defects in the wall. Your roofer could be correct that the roughcast is the issue particularly if its cement. Can you inspect it?

You say you had the chimney stacks removed. Are the fireplaces not in use or does the flue for your woodburner still exit through the roof? That's another potential point of water ingress but my money would be on the wall itself given how extensive the problem seems to be. Are you sure its a cavity wall? The cavity should decouple inside and outside to reduce likelihood of water penetration.

The plasterboard, gypsum skim, modern paints etc. on your internal walls will exacerbate the problem by stopping the walls breathing so penetrating moisture can't get back out that way. Traditional materials are better at managing the occasional bit of dampness and can dry out without any lasting damage. Modern stuff unfortunately can't and eventually turns to mush which is what you are seeing. Its possible this is a long term problem and a previous owner's "solution" has been to strip the internal walls and replace with nice clean modern stuff. That appears to work for a bit, until it doesn't.

I've just removed the plasterboard from an external wall which was thoroughly disgusting and built it back up with breathable insulation and lime plaster. I also removed a significant amount of debris from behind the plasterboard and under the floor that was bridging dampness from the wall onto the floor timbers causing them to deteriorate. Until such times as I can get the outside repointed it should now be in a better condition to manage a little bit of wetness from time to time. We're also reinstating the fireplace so that after events like this we can get a bit of heat into the wall to help it dry out.

 

[Ricardobles123]

The wind and rain yesterday saturated our gable wall giving rise to a few trickles down the fire flues on that side. I'm pretty sure the root cause is the pointing on that wall which is cement and quite badly cracked in places as I've been all round the houses with the chimney stacks and roof which like you all appear to be sound. The fire flues being closer to the surface of the wall tend to be the first place you see water ingress if there are any defects in the wall. Your roofer could be correct that the roughcast is the issue particularly if its cement. Can you inspect it?

You say you had the chimney stacks removed. Are the fireplaces not in use or does the flue for your woodburner still exit through the roof? That's another potential point of water ingress but my money would be on the wall itself given how extensive the problem seems to be. Are you sure its a cavity wall? The cavity should decouple inside and outside to reduce likelihood of water penetration.

The plasterboard, gypsum skim, modern paints etc. on your internal walls will exacerbate the problem by stopping the walls breathing so penetrating moisture can't get back out that way. Traditional materials are better at managing the occasional bit of dampness and can dry out without any lasting damage. Modern stuff unfortunately can't and eventually turns to mush which is what you are seeing. Its possible this is a long term problem and a previous owner's "solution" has been to strip the internal walls and replace with nice clean modern stuff. That appears to work for a bit, until it doesn't.

I've just removed the plasterboard from an external wall which was thoroughly disgusting and built it back up with breathable insulation and lime plaster. I also removed a significant amount of debris from behind the plasterboard and under the floor that was bridging dampness from the wall onto the floor timbers causing them to deteriorate. Until such times as I can get the outside repointed it should now be in a better condition to manage a little bit of wetness from time to time. We're also reinstating the fireplace so that after events like this we can get a bit of heat into the wall to help it dry out.

The fireplace/flue is currently not in use. We figured until the rest of the issues were resolved having the woodburner installed wasnt the smartest idea so left the chimney open once the stack was removed. Long term will have a new flue for the woodburner coming out the roof when its time to do so.

We had an inspection a year ago regarding insulation and were told that the wall was a cavity. Our assumption is purely based on that. I The plan is to strip the entire wall back to brick and redo it.