Modern extension requiring breathable floor?

[Hatster]

Hi all,
Quick recap for those who don't automatically remember the construction details of other forum posters' houses - Hatster Towers is a timber-framed 17th century farmhouse with a bad case of pebbledash and a fair amount of damp. Exciting moments have included 'what is the mysterious rusted iron in our kitchen wall' and 'why is our house damp'.

The current kitchen of Hatster Towers is a long, thin extension (approx 1950s), running along what had been the exterior wall of the former kitchen - so what was the exterior wall is now the interior wall. This wall appears to be slightly ... wait for it ... damp - i.e. paint is bubbling up and flaking off it in one place, and the aforementioned iron in the wall (covering up wires) has rusted. If this was any other interior wall in the house, I'd conclude that water was trying to escape the concrete floor and going up the permeable wall materials and causing damp. BUT as far as I can see, this interior wall is made out of bricks and cement. It looks like when the previous owners put the kitchen extension on, they decided to rebuild the wall in modern materials. But then why is there this damp problem? Surely having a concrete floor is fine if you have a concrete wall to match? Does this mean it's not a totally modern wall?

The ultimate question is - am I likely to need to make the floor breathable, or not? And if I do, what kinds of flooring are suitable for a kitchen, affordable, and breathable?
Thanks muchly!

 

[JoceAndChris]

Pics!

Are you certain it's a modern wall?

This isn't the first troublesome damp modern extension I've read about, and I've got one too.

Breathable floor sounds good, though you have to wonder if it's worth it if breathing isn't going on elsewhere. I'm sure someone will be along to talk about Limecrete, but also flags would be lovely.

 

[AMc]

What is the room used for? I'd be much more likely to look at humidity and condensation over rising damp in the first instance.
How modern are the bricks and cement? An old soft brick wall repointed with cement would also be bad news.

 

[Hatster]

Well, as you say, it is a kitchen, so it gets a lot of moisture, and it has a very long exterior wall with two big windows in it. The current extractor fan is pretty awful - we'll be sorting that out with the new kitchen. I also don't open the windows much as I can't reach the bit that opens! I'm not really sure how to sort that out, short of growing a lot.

It has a radiator at one end, and the damp problems are at the other end of the kitchen - which is actually where the previous owner had her kettle (we know as the paint is coming off the wall by where she had it).

Hmm, you may well be right on the condensation being the problem.

I'll take a photo and upload.

I may have to investigate the bricks further - from the 2inch strip visible, they don't look really old (i.e. not C17), but they don't look sharp and new either.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Well, as you say, it is a kitchen, so it gets a lot of moisture, and it has a very long exterior wall with two big windows in it. The current extractor fan is pretty awful - we'll be sorting that out with the new kitchen. I also don't open the windows much as I can't reach the bit that opens! I'm not really sure how to sort that out, short of growing a lot.

I have just the same problem. My dad made me a pretty step-up, and my husband made me a pole with a hook on the end: but it depends how your window opens I suppose. Is it a sash? Life's tricky when you can never reach anything isn't it? My favourite thing is my new working platform from Wickes. You can push it up to about 6 feet. I can't recommend it highly enough- no more precarious work on ladders for me!

How severe is the damp in here? Is it just peeling blistering paint? Is there a smell? Does stuff go mouldy? Is there visible mould?

 

[Hatster]

Just blistering paint in the main kitchen, really, and the only black mould is in the pantry, which I think was suffering from the idiotic combination of installing a condenser dryer while at the same time blocking up the air vent.

Maybe I'm worrying over nothing, but it would be a nuisance to lay down a new floor and a new kitchen and then take up the floor again for remedial works.

Still, I have a plasterer coming round next week, so I could get him to look at that wall while he's at it.

Maybe I need a step up too?

 

[Hatster]

Right, here we have a picture of the kitchen. The wall on the left is the one which was originally an exterior wall, and is now an interior wall. This is the one with the possible damp problems.

As you can see, the kitchen floor is quarry tiles, I suspect on a concrete floor. The room on the other side of the wall still has the original brick floor, and doesn't seem to ahve any damp problems on that particular wall, although of course it doesn't have anything like the amount of moisture in the atmosphere.

Here's a close up of the blistering paint, which is at the far end of the kitchen

Any ideas on whether the floor is causing a problem - or, indeed, any interior design advice?

 

[Feltwell]

Life's tricky when you can never reach anything isn't it?

Perhaps, but you can seek pleasure & the occasional smirk when you see us tall people on a bus / plane / going to the theatre or cinema or any other public space where they try and squeeze people in, looking very uncomfortable indeed. My personal least favourite - Snowdon Mountain Railway, who clearly think all their customers are below 5'6".

I turned down an old house once because I couldn't stand up straight in many of the rooms, and I'm not that tall. :?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Feltwell- thanks for being so nice about our dwarfish condition. Sometimes it does have advantages, the best of which is that you can curl up on 2 seats of a National Express coach and have a good, cheap snooze all the way to Paris.

Hatster- that is not a damp kitchen. You need to have a nice cup of tea in that lovely little kitchen and calm down. I wouldn't worry about breathable floors or rebuilt walls. You haven't shown me pots of millipedes you've collected, or moaned about mouldy pasta or colonies of silverfish. All there is is a bit of blistering paint. I would sand it down, let it dry over summer, reskim redecorate and then be more careful about appropriate ventilation in future.

That's just my worthless amateur opinion. Someone may come along and say you need a limecrete floor, or a new breathing wall. But to me, it doesn't look particularly broken, so why do a huge fix.

 

[Schoolmarm]

It looks like a mismatch of paint to me. Something modern painted over something old.

 

[Moo]

You may well be right, Schoolmarm. We've had very similar patches in our house - the result of (pre PPUK) using emulsion paint over what I now realise must have been lime.
I just couldn't face the prospect of removing it all, so I just scrape off the loose bits and try to convince myself that we're going for the shabby-chic look (to match our furniture).

 

[Schoolmarm]

Yes me too, the latest one has appeared on a very dry internal bedroom wall.

 

[Hatster]

Fair enough, Joce - I know it's pretty minor compared to the drama going on in other people's houses! We do have much worse dampproblems elsewhere, so really it was just trying to sort this one out before it got bad!

The wrong paint suggestion rings quite true to me - it's got that sort of odd flaking, bubbling look, and underneath there's that traditional blue colour that's supposed to repel flies. I wonder whether actually another of the problems i've put down to damp have actually been modern paint on inappropriately prepared / inappropriate underlying materials. That would explain the odd patches of bad paint in rooms that seem totally dry.

That would certainly make things much easier.

BUT the new question then is - what do we do about the wall? Sand down wherever it's dodgy and re-paint the whole wall in modern materials? Or try to remove the modern paint off the whole wall in some way?

By the way, I think I might go for Joce's heart-cut out suggestion in a damp cupboard we have.

 

[Hatster]

P.S. Mr Hatster just said 'Oh, I didn't know we had any problems with the paint in the kitchen'...

 

[JoceAndChris]

BUT the new question then is - what do we do about the wall? Sand down wherever it's dodgy and re-paint the whole wall in modern materials? Or try to remove the modern paint off the whole wall in some way?

Personally I'd do the former and assess it over the next few years. (improving ventilation though!)

But if you don't mind a couple of days working with chemicals probably the best thing to do is to use a product (Klingstrip maybe?) from Strippers of Sudbury (they have a good advice sheet), get the modern stuff off and back to the old paint and then limewash. It just depends on how crazy you'd like to drive yourself...

I don't know how easy it is to use a chemical to remove the modern stuff only, without burning into the old paint, as I've always removed all the paint, and started again.

Has anyone had any success removing just top layers?

RE heart shaped holes- you'll need a jigsaw, and a jigsawing man. (Power jigsaws are pretty violent!)

Good luck!

 

[Moo]

If it were just a case of one wall in one room I might think about stripping the stuff off, but there's no way our budget could stretch to two flights of stairs, a hall and two landings, and a double bedroom.
So when I can't bear the scabby walls any more I think I will sand down the rough edges and paint all the walls with something breathable and aesthetically pleasing. It's been twelve years since they were done, so I don't think I can put it off for many more years.....

 

[Hatster]

Thanks, peeps. Hmmm. I actually have a whole load of Klingstripping to do - not sure if I can face more.

Hmmm... I think I shall spend some time prodding the wall with a chisel again and see what I can find.