HELP NEEDED BEFORE DIVORCE (JOKE)

[sarah j]

Hello to all thank god ive found this site,please oh please can someone answer my questions,i shall star with a coupleWe have just brought a beautiful Victorian house which needs alot of tlc,would anyone know why even though my husband knocked all the plaster off back to the brick,bonded and skimmed it there is still a patch where the soot is bleeding through?he brushed the chimney before hand ,could anyone put some light on this?
Also when we lifted the old carpet they some of the floor boards have been replaced,we have found ten which we will have to replace due to being rotten,there is an awful smell off damp in the room now any answers on that too?
thank you very much

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

Regardsless of the new plastering applied any dampness in the flue will track through the masonry to a direr area - like your new plaster. As is does so it will bring soluble gunge fron the soot / tar with it, hence the black staining. To treat this you need to consider conditions in the flue - is it used / disused, capped / uncapped, ventilated top & bottom? If rain is getting in the top, or through a thin section of external wall, and if there is a lack of adequate ventilation then there's your source of damp.

w.r.t the floorboards - tell us more. Upstairs / down, type of wall construction, floorcovering etc. When you say the boards were rotten, what was that like? Did you get it identified as wet rot or dry rot?

 

[Moo]

The best advice I can give you is that you do a search of the forum related to Damp. You'll find lots and lots of good advice there.

 

[Penners]

Andrew has given you a very comprehensive answer on the soot stain.

Presumably the room with rotten floorboards and a damp smell is downstairs? If so, then the first thing I would look for is ventilation to the cavity under the floor. If you look around the outside of any external walls of that room, you should find some ventilation grilles or air bricks close to the ground.

Check that these are not blocked outside or inside. Also check that there are several of them, to ensure a good air flow.

If you can't find them, then you'll need to do some excavation of the soil (or whatever) around the walls, as they've probably been buried at some stage. Excavate the soil around the grilles and, once again, check that they're clear of obstructions so that the air can circulate freely in the underfloor cavity.

When you lift the rotten boards, have a good look around in the cavity to make sure that (a) it's not full of muck and/or rubble that will prevent effective ventilation, and (b) that you can't see any signs of dry rot (fungus-like growths).

If I've guessed wrong, and the rotten boards are upstairs, let us know.

 

[Moo]

And after that lovely clear advice I feel ashamed that all I could manage to do was suggest a search.
Mind you, it was rather early, and I hadn't quite woken up.

 

[Penners]

It was good advice, Moo. A search will yield a much wider body of opinion than just one or two individual responses.

 

[NT]

Searching on damp is guaranteed to leave anyone new to the subject lost in confusion

NT

 

[NT]

Keeping the underfloor cavity ventilated and not-wet is the solution. Ensure external soil/path levels are several inches below the floor level, and the external vents are all clear.

Where its impractical to lower ground levels, as can occasionally happen, the vents can be sunk each in their own little well. These will need leaves and debris removing regularly.


NT

 

[sarah j]

Thanks all for your advice,we found that the outer wall was very wet as there had been a rose growing up the wall for a conserable amount of time.so this is now down and all the earth has been removed from around the area and it is now slowly drying out.we found no sign of any fungus growing so hopefully the smell can be put down to the dampness against the wall.As for the chimney we now believe that the cowl (chinaman) may be cracked so up on the roof we will go!
We are now in the process of replacing the floorboards that are rotten.
Thanks again

Sarah