How much for new Damp Proof Course.

vaughan80

I moved into a house a year ago. The house has been extended at several intervals. The front part of the house is dated around 1824, the top half (upstairs) is around the 70's.

When the survey came back the surveyor did find damp in a corner of the living room, and in another room at the front. The sellers got a company to treat the problem using chemical solution injection stuff....

A year later, it has returned. In the living room, the plaster up to a foot from the floor is bubbling and flaky, the other room is wall papered, but it has stained the paper and is peeling at the bottom. Upstairs, in one of the bedrooms, there are some small, minor damp patches on the chimney breast.

The house sits directly on the street (no front garden), and is rendered on the outside (this was done about 6 years ago).

To cut a long story short, from what I read here, rising damp is a myth. If that is the case, what would be the best way to treat this? Are we looking at an entire strip back to bare brick job, or could it maybe be a case of checking the pointing / rendering for any gaps and ensuring there is adequate ventilation?

gstadt

vaughan80 wrote: »

I moved into a house a year ago. The house has been extended at several intervals. The front part of the house is dated around 1824, the top half (upstairs) is around the 70's.

When the survey came back the surveyor did find damp in a corner of the living room, and in another room at the front. The sellers got a company to treat the problem using chemical solution injection stuff....

A year later, it has returned. In the living room, the plaster up to a foot from the floor is bubbling and flaky, the other room is wall papered, but it has stained the paper and is peeling at the bottom. Upstairs, in one of the bedrooms, there are some small, minor damp patches on the chimney breast.

The house sits directly on the street (no front garden), and is rendered on the outside (this was done about 6 years ago).

To cut a long story short, from what I read here, rising damp is a myth. If that is the case, what would be the best way to treat this? Are we looking at an entire strip back to bare brick job, or could it maybe be a case of checking the pointing / rendering for any gaps and ensuring there is adequate ventilation?

Houses build before 1850 tend to not have had a damp proof course (slate) put in. A school of thought is that DPC's are unnecessary - the dutch have a long history of not installing DPC's even though their houses are built very close to the water line. Water capillary action from the water level is expected and planned for.

In your case, I'd check if the ground is raised by the external wall, where the damp is one foot from the floor, and either dig it back or put a trench to enable the water to run off away from the wall.

Any moisture [damp] above one foot is caused by either penetration (render cracks/overflowing gutters) or leaky internal pipework.

glanders

I have been perusing the previous posts on this thread (albeit not the whole six pages!) with interest. I live in an 1870 brick built three storey terraced farm worker's cottage and have done for about nine years. We are looking to move to a bigger place and our prospective buyer has just had a home-buyer's survey done. This flagged up some ground floor damp and recommended a damp survey.

The guy came round today to do the (free) survey and it turns out he works for a remedial DPC contractor... He spent about 15 minutes going round the house with a small handheld moisture meter and concluded that we have rising damp throughout the ground floor, most likely the result of a failed DPC. He maintained that he is independent, but that his parent company has around a 20% 'conversion rate' (!) for remedial works based on his recommendations.

I can't argue with the guy's moisture meter, nor that of the original surveyor, but it just doesn't stack up. This is the warmest, driest house that I have ever lived in. There is no evidence of any moisture, staining, dampness, bubbling paint, mould, salting or mildew in any corner of the house, even where furniture has stood undisturbed against an external wall for some time. My wife and I are both a little anal about the smell of damp and have never noticed even the faintest hint of it in our house. We queried this with the dampness dude and he maintained that 'you can only smell damp when it is associated with condensation - rising damp doesn't smell'.

Inevitably, when this guy goes back to our once-keen prospective buyer with his doom-laden report, she is either going to run a mile or demand a substantial reduction on the purchase price. This is going to put us in a slightly tricky position. I have read the advice above with regard to commissioning an independent damp specialist surveyor and have found a couple locally (Martin Ball and JW Surveys) that I will contact in due course.

I've got a couple of questions that I'd be really grateful for any assistance with. Firstly, is it likely that a house presenting with a serious rising damp problem would be completely symptom-free (apart from the meter readings, obviously)? Secondly, does anyone who has been through a similar set of circumstances from either the vendor or buyer point of view have any advice they'd like to share?

Thanks a lot in anticipation,
Tom.

cris2014

Hi
Can anyone give me the contact details of people that do the dpc replacement near Heathrow area south west London please??

I need to be done asap. No silicon injections please. Real dpc replacement.

Thank you

papervolcano

Hi all,

I've a query regarding damp proofing in my 1890's end terrace. When we bought the place, we were told that some remedial damp works had been carried out about 20-odd years ago. However, I've now got bubbling/cracking plaster at waist height on two walls in my living room, and the plaster has actually started to come away from under the windowsill - I can also see what I presume is salt in the remaining plaster.

The pebbledashing is starting to crack, so that'll not be helping and will need to come off (my poor bank account!), and I know our cellar is in a bad way, but I've not been able to get anyone to do the work that needs doing down there (removing the saturated plaster and dealing with some dodgy plumbing) and I'm not able to do it myself.

Can anyone make suggestions as to what my options are? I don't know if it's the DPC that's failed, or if the cellar is just so damp that it's come up to the top of the old membrane. We've no other damp problems, no mould or the like.

Thanks for any suggestions

kingstreet

Independent timber & damp surveyor.

It'll cost you a few hundred for the report, but you won't be quoted thousands for any unnecessary damp course replacements by a firm offering "free" reports.

http://independentdampsurveyors.co.uk/

dewicymro

We have just accepted a quote from Peter Cox (national company) for injection of the mortar courses on a c1900 cavity wall brick built single storey house. Total length is about 100 metres of single skin brickwork, cost, including vat is about £750.00. The work is guaranteed for 20 years . This is for the injection work only, I am dealing with removing and replacing the plaster/rendering. So far as I can see, that works out to about £7.50 per metre of single skin brickwork. I have done a bit of research on this; the chemicals for this length cost about £200 and the work will involve drilling about 900-1000 holes! We had a range of other quotes eg Rentokill £2400 and several in the range £900-1700. Hope this helps

dewicymro

older properties were designed to "breathe", ie allow any dampness to evaporate off. To that end walls were coated with Lime plastering and rendering which is not waterproof and coated with limewash paints. This allowed any moisture to evaporate off. Modern practice has been to use waterproof cement based products and vinyl based emulsion paints which prevent the water from evaporating. The effect of this can be disastrous. If you render the outside of a damp wall to "cure the damp problem" you merely trap the moisture within the wall and allow it to rise further up ! This is known as "sick Building syndrome">Also, often ground levels have risen over the years around older properties. If this arises, then you may have bridged over any existing DPC or, at a minimum , allowed dampness to rise further up the wall. So best practice advice with older properties is not to fight against the way the building was designed but rather try to work with it. Remove any paths close to the walls. Reduce ground levels around the house if possible. Remove waterproof rendering and replace with lime render. Remove emulsion paint and replace with lime based products...loads available!. Remove any modern plaster and replace with lime plaster. Pay attention to good ventilation, perhaps look at installing a MVHR ventilation system...they are very effective and not too expensive.

The situation described in the post here is typical of a well constructed older building; there is technically some dampness in the walls...meter readings...but the building is "breathing" and so the technical dampness has no noticeable effect! Leave well alone unless it is actually intrusive is my advice!
I am a quantity surveyor and own an old house !

dewicymro

I should have mentioned that the reason we are having the dpc injected is we have a very high water table under the house with a stream close by so are effectively having to tank the property with new floors with polythene membrane etc. Definite rising damp! it only has to rise about a foot or three to be above floor level! Fortunately there are flood defences for the stream so flooding shouldn't be a problem. We are also doing other things such as removing cement rendering and replacing with lime render, removing impervious surfaces from the ground near the house, lowering ground levels around the house and removing impervious paints internally and installing a ventilation system. I inserted a slate DPC to a length of wall that needed repair and this stopped any dampness totally, but I dont fancy dealing with the rest of the walls this way!

Lobson_plasterer

A lot of comments on here are very questionable. This is the cost of damproofing a terraced house: skip £150, damproofing cream £400, sand and cement £120, waterproofer £15, labour includes knocking off old plaster/render then re-rendering and skimming past 1mtr. Takes 5 days 2 guys lab £1100 total £1785. If skiming all walls afterwards you can add another £500 on top. I live in the north west and I'm a plasterer of 20 years.