Procedure & cost of sorting out damp in a few 100yr old house?

Nine_Lives

I know our (by our, i mean my mums) house isn't as valuable as it could be.
It's an old canal house. I don't know exactly how old, but it's as old as the canal system, give or take a few years. The early 1700s spring to mind, though i could be wrong. Maybe early 1800s, i'm not sure.

Anyway, as you can imagine it's an old stone building. It suffers quite bad with damp. I know the shed next to the house is built out of lime mortar, or that's what was used (you can tell how much i know about this! lol).

Anyway, to bring up the value of the house, damp would need to be sorted. I know there's also woodworm in the house too.

Anyway, what's the procedure for sorting this & how costly can it get?

dampdaveski

Hi Nine,
First thing to do is get it surveyed
If the property was built before 1875 then it almost certainly doesn't have a damp proof course.
The whole house is probably built out of lime mortar.

I suggest you look at the Property care association website (www.property-care.org)
You have a choice of getting contractors in or an 'independant' surveyor.
I'm a contractor and I know I don't invent work, I also charge for my surveys, HOWEVER I can't vouch for every member
for you own piece of mind, consider getting an independant in, they'll probably charge you between £200 - £300 (maybe more, maybe less)

If you have a lot of work to do and general upgrading works that fall into the 'general building' catagory then it might be worth considering getting a chartered surveyor in, (look for RICS) just make sure when you are talking to them that they specialise in older properties.

I suppose the only other thing to add is, if you do it on 'the cheap' you 'get cheap'


Good luck
DD

Hintza

First and easiest thing that you could do is check exterior ground levels. With these old houses the ground levels build up over time and you can just gig them back down. After that it will probably need a survey.

Melaniep101

^^^ what dampdaveski said^^^

Nine_Lives

Cheers Dave.

Just curious - what do you get with this survey then? I figured there'd be no damp proof course, but shy of knocking the house down & starting from scratch, what is the process of rectifying all that? I'm not asking so i can tot off on my DIY self, i'm just asking out of curiosity - what would a professional actually (physically) do?

dampdaveski

Hi Nine,
Whether it be a contractor, independant damp surveyor or a chartered surveyor, the process should be

Survey the building to determine the condition as it stands, identify the problems and the CAUSE.
Then the cunning part is to come up with the correct solution, this should also bear in mind the future use of the building, clients 'wants' v building 'needs', the timescales for your intended use of the building

the priorities should always be to make the property water tight and safe, so ensuring the gutters and fall pipes are good, any external high ground levels are reduced.
If there is badly water damaged plaster on the walls, this should be removed to allow the building to dry down
If time is on your side then you can do these and wait ensuring you ventilate the building (this is really important).
the other thing they should check is the condition of the floors, whether they be suspended timber or concrete

there are many ways of reinstating the property, too many to go into here, however where possible
Always try and dry line the external walls with insulation or insulated plasterboard (be careful about fixing these with adhesive)
A new chemical DPC if it's needed is an easy job

The biggest thing is to make sure that YOU know what you want out of the renovation and more importantly you communicate that to the people involved
A lot of problems in the construction industry and particularly domestic work (in my humble opinion) are down to a lack of communication by one of the parties involved, if you have both parties involved that are bad communicators then the project is doomed

I appreciate that is going off on a tangent somewhat, but it is such an important point it's worth my soapbox rant!
If everyone DID communicate then I suspect this forum board would be an awful lot quieter

cyclonebri1

And don't get totally hung up on rising damp, it's as likely to be penetrating damp given the age and construction.

Incidentally, just how close is it to the canal?, canals can leak remember;)

new_owner

Be careful about anyone suggesting chemical damp proof course or even that you need one. This is an old house.

Read this first before letting anyone tell you what you need to do

http://www.heritage-house.org/pages/managing-damp-in-old-buildings.html

Nine_Lives

In all honesty, my mum would probably just leave it. I doubt she can afford to rectify this issue. It'd be a shame because i am guessing this will be knocking a good number of thousands off the value of the house.

I know it's a bit of a morbid topic, and i'm not trying to gain any sort of sick advantage here, but the realistic side of things is that if it's still in my mums possession when she dies (obviously hopefully many years down the line) then it'll pass to her 3 kids - me, my sister & my brother. Times & opinions change, but at this moment in time i would be interested in getting it all done up. There is plenty of land with this house & scope to extend. I imagine there could be many benefits later on for a bit of work now.

I asked at work today if they could recommend a builder i could discuss this with. They said not & that a specialist would be required. They mentioned tanking but one thing they said was that due to the age of our house, it could automatically be a listed building of some grade..? Don't know how accurate that could be.

As for the damp, our house is sort of 2 levels (before you say of course......) The upstairs is above road level. The downstairs is below road level. The rear of the house is only a pavement width away from the main road.
As for how close to the actual canal, possibly 100yds at a guess, though the damp doesn't actually come in from the front - it's more from the rear on the roads side. You can see water forming on the stairs wall so we have to have a dehumidifier running quite often.
As for the flooring - the upstairs is wooden floor boards, however the downstairs i'm not quite sure. It's not concrete as such. I'm not quite sure what it is tbh, which i know doesn't help you.

cyclonebri1

Nine_Lives wrote: »

As for how close to the actual canal, possibly 100yds at a guess, though the damp doesn't actually come in from the front - it's more from the rear on the roads side. You can see water forming on the stairs wall so we have to have a dehumidifier running quite often.
As for the flooring - the upstairs is wooden floor boards, however the downstairs i'm not quite sure. It's not concrete as such. I'm not quite sure what it is tbh, which i know doesn't help you.

In that case it being a canal house is a red herring, I thought maybe alongside a canal:D

It's condensation you have from an under ventilated or under heated home, given the extra heating and damp risks you have from such an old property.

Nine_Lives

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

It's condensation you have from an under ventilated or under heated home, given the extra heating and damp risks you have from such an old property.

I'm not challenging you with my next comment (as me making this thread shows i don't have a clue, i'm only asking, but .......), how are you so sure without seeing the situation with your own 2 eyes?

If the canal is the sole cause, i wonder how the front of the property is perfectly fine & only the rear is showing signs.
Also, is the solution the same if what you say is correct?