Major damp headache!

rajanm

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone could help me get to the bottom of a dampness mystery in my home.

Please bear with me....

A while ago I had a leak in my bathroom which spread through my store cupboard and then into my living room wall.

I got my bathroom repaired through insurance and my living room redecorated too. The decorators stripped all the wall paper in the living room, dried out the damp patch on my living room wall using dehumidifiers and fans, eventually getting the wall dry.

They then replastered the walls only to find that the patches which had previously been damp just wouldn't dry. So again we got dehumidifiers and fans in and the patches were dried out. The wall was painted and everything seemed fine - until a couple of days later the same patches showed up as damp again!!

The insurance company then got some nitrate tests done to see whether the problem was rising damp. Now this is where it gets even stranger.

The Nitrate test showed that one side of the living room wall (the cupboard side) had no nitrate contamination (the liquid was a yellowey brown colour) but the the other side did (the liquid went bright red). The guy that did the test didn't really seem to know what he was doing - he scraped bare brick from the cupboard side of the wall but all he tested was the plaster from the living room side.

I have just had Kenwood Damp proofers over to do a survey (Rising damp isn't covered by insurance) and the bloke there seems to think that the plaster itself may have been contaminated or that the wrong plaster had been used (apparently there's a special type of plaster you're meant to apply to damp walls??).

He's not entirely sure that a damp proof course would solve the problem although he does say that the cupboard side of the wall IS showing signs of dampness as is the concrete floor of the cupboard (although I've been told that's natural as concrete is damp by nature).

Anyway, apologies for the meandering story but I am at a loss as to what to do next. I've got a damp living room wall and several experts giving me conflicting advice!

Can anyone help?


Thanks in advance

Rajan

keystone

Am unclear what the bathroom leak has to do with it tbh. Got some pics please? Forum probably won't let you post links yet so take pics, upload to an image hosting site. Copy and past the url for each image as text back into a new post here but before you submit the post alter the text by changing the tt in http to something else like mm. One of us can then put it back to see your images.

Cheers

Purleygirl

Well, I'm no expert but we've had an annoying damp problem in one of our daughter's bedrooms, end of the house, next to the bathroom and we have solved the problem by getting a small greenhouse heater, very low wattage, you can leave it on for hours and it's v cheap and it does the trick. Think it was from b and q. There's so much differing stuff on line some say leave the window open, some say close it because the damp air comes in, all I know is what worked, direct low wattage heat on the affected area. Damp smell gone too. It's worth a try for a few quid.

rajanm

Hi Keystone,

Take a look at h**p://www.flickr.com/photos/92270535@N06/

You can see the dark patches there quite clearly - any ideas?

keystone

CLICKY FOR PICS.

My first thought on viewing the pics was contamination too but now having rearead your initial post I'm not so sure. Given its location it strikes me that its not associated with the bathroom leak or there would be other patches further up the wall.

I'm also not sure why it was necessary to replaster if the old plaster had been dried out. Unless they plastered the whole wall why do you not have patches higher up, as you would from an upstairs leak. One obvious point is that although the plaster may have dried out if the bricks/blockwork behind had not then it will continue to come through. In that case I'd be expecting some efflorescence but its not obvious from the pics. I'm also not convinced this meets the criteria of the myth of "rising" damp.

Short of just leaving it to see what happens. I think I'd be tempted to scrape the paint off, apply an anti-alkali primer to the plaster and repaint.

So what if it isn't plaster contamination or wall still not dried out from leak? Is the wall in question an outside wall? If so what is the ground level in relation to the dark patches. Its possible you may have penetrating damp from rainwater splashing up from an elevated ground level. Does the gutter leak out there?

Has someone been digging to the left of the 13A double socket?

Sorry not to be much more help at this stage. I'll sleep on it but can't guarantee "a blinding flash of the bleeding obvious" by the morning.

Cheers