Recommendation on damp and rendering?

fino

I had bought a house a year back and a niggly problem has just emerged:mad: .

Damp has recently started on one of the walls which I got to know from the outside is not plastered at all (and was not picked up in the survey either when purchasing). This wall faces the next door neighbour but is owned by me - cannot claim through insurance obviously due to this "design defect".

The wall is built with breeze blocks (not ordinary bricks - you would assume) and needs to be rectified. I have been told that the best way to fix this problem is to render the wall externally which I have no idea as to what this will cost (16 sq m) - i am sure we are not talking small money here; and then take the boards off from the inside, re-board and plaster.

I would like to ask for advice as to the most reasonable way to fix this problem (also welcome DIY options to cut costs) as I really can't afford hundreds of £££ for this (the mortgage and the bills are more than enough!).

Will appreciate your response.:)
Any recommendations of good plasterers who could do the job in Birmingham would also be great!!

adaze

Damp doesn't usually "just start", has anything changed?, i.e. we had damp when we bought our house, turned out the drainpipe just stopped when it got into the ground and that was causing the damp.... Might be worth seeing if anything could be contributing to it, such as slabs over the DPC....

fino

I am assuming just having the breeze blocks (as they are porous) would be letting all rainwater to be absorbed thru???

BB1984

If the wall has been there for X number of years, it wouldn't have just started letting water through. All bricks/blocks are porous - that's why walls are normally built with a DPC, and a cavity. If the wall has a DPC, then water can't soak up the wall from the ground, and a cavity stops water soaking in from the outside if it gets wet.

Do you have a cavity? has anything changed - i.e. have you had the cavity insulated, or changed anything in the roof? Water can travel quite some distance so i would check your roof to make sure water isn't running down inside. Perhaps open up the wall and check that the cavity isn't blocked.

The damp problem may not be a recent development - the previous owners may have decorated over it to sell the house, and the damp may have only just managed to penetrate through the plaster and paint.

Rendering may help, but it won't necessarily cure the problem - you need to find out for sure why the wall is failing.

bb