woodworm and damp

londonlydia

Haven't been on this forum in months as have been battling through my house purchase! Anyway, completing on fri, but we're not moving in straight away as we want to do some work on it. For information it is a 3 floor 1903 solid wall house. We have had a building survey and 2 damp surveys.

First thing is treating various area of damp, each with their own cause I think. Would appreciate opinions please on what we can do first of all, before we have to go down the line of getting a company in to inject a DPC.

Areas 1) Under steps cupboard: Damp and woodworm

So we have one of those houses where you can go in at the lower ground floor or in the middle floor. There are a set of steps going up and down from the pavement which is halfway in terms of height between the floors. Under these steps leading up to the main front door (middle floor), there is a cupboard which is accessed from inside the house on the bottom floor. This is cold, damp and has active woodworm in the timbers, as effectively it's not warmed by the central heating because of where it is. It's where all the meters are for the house. i read somewhere that these often are problematic areas. I want to minimise the damp and then get the woodworm treated. It should be noted the current vendors closed all their vents to stop drafts....so not helping matters!

Does anyone have any tips as to what to do with this sort of space? My first suspect is overhauling the steps, especially the rendering on them, as I suspect there may be cracks and leaky bits getting the moisture in. But it's still going to be unheated. Can you insulate the area at all as heating it will be a moneypit...

Area 2) Under the stairs cupboard damp and woodworm

Not to be confused with under the steps, this is under the internal stairs on the bottom floor. i have two potential causes, one being poor ventilation, and secondly there's a downstairs shower-room against it which is very poorly ventilated, and the tray/ tiles look a bit worse for wear. Plus it's across the hall from the utility space which currently has an open drain where the previous vendors plumbed their washing machine pipe to!!!! Plan is to firstly close this drain up, reseal and vent the shower room, and maybe put a vent in the cupboard door?

Area 3) Lower floor, flank wall

So along the side of the house we have a sloped dirt path. This wall has damp at various points, most notably at the front corner.
There are three causes in my eyes here: one a high ground level where the dirt and weeds have been allowed to build up high against the house, above the bottom of the render. Secondly, the rubbish spar-dash render, which is cracked and blown all over the place. Lastly, there is a retaining wall adjoining the corner of the house, with render also in a poor state...
We intend to get rid of the old render, and potentially build in a French drain along the path as we own the path so long as we dont prevent pedestrian access and its naturally sloped. at the same time we will lower the ground level as well. Considering having the retaining front wall looked at as well to see if there is an adequate waterproof layer between the wall and the house.

Area 4) Chimney breast, middle floor

There are no vents n the closed up chimney breast...so can you add these now or would we need to do something more extensive? Damp is only slight here and the only place beyond the bottom floor where damp was found....


Hopefully after all this we will reduce the causes at least. After that, I've heard we will need to replaster. We were also considering improving the insulation at the same time as its solid wall...how long would you normally wait to see if the damp has improved before considering this? We were thinking of internal insulation, or a mix of external (flank wall only) and internal insulation as we have nice stucco on the front and back.

Thanks all, appreciate long pose but better to get all the info up now...