Damp disaster

DSAJ

My girlfriend and I moved into our house last year and soon realised we had a damp problem. We live in a terraced house with an alley down one side and have what looks to be rising damp down the whole of that wall, this includes kitchen, dining room and living room. All the paint peals from the bottom of the walls and we constantly find mould in our kitchen units. We also have damp on one of the interior walls which is a partition wall on the opposite side of the room to the alley wall (let's hope that makes sense). It rained really heavily 2 nights ago and the damp seems to have gotten exponentially worse! In some parts the damp reaches knee hight and is sopping wet. We had the exterior walls injected a couple of months ago but didn't strip and replace the plaster but it got steadily worse until the big rain. Any ideas what I need to do? Do I need to replace the plaster? Is it in fact rising damp? Does it call for something bigger to be done? And what sort of price am I looking at paying?

warmhands.coldheart

Personal opinion here (some may Disagree)
I had our house "injected" and did it by the book. Stripped ALL plaster off walls up 1.5m above floor level and had the brickwork injected both sides (Internally & Externally) All walls re-plastered there stripped. now could be an additional problem in yours as was in some of our rooms due to the age of the house... Non existant DPM in floors. We ended up replacing all the floors too. Not a sign of any dampness now whatsoever.

This was done as part of a major renovation and we weren't living in the house.

pinkteapot

Fundamentally, dealing with damp involves two steps:

1. Finding the source of the water (where it's coming into the fabric of your house from outside, and why)

2. Drying out the walls, replastering, etc.

You said you had injection treatments. It will take a LONG time for the walls to dry out fully, but the fact it's got worse after heavy rain suggests that the source of the problem might not actually been solved. You need to get more damp experts round to diagnose. Stop water coming in, then worry about plastering, etc.

My parents' house flooded once (from a river). They had carpets off and plaster stripped off the walls for a number of months, with dehumidifiers running. Only when the walls were fully dry was it replastered. It takes ages for all the water to be drawn out of walls once they've got wet.

I_have_spoken

an alley down one side and have what looks to be rising damp down the whole of that wall

YOu need to check IF you have a DPC, then if it's well above the level of paving etc. in the alley, plus have they blocked up air bricks.

I'd expect any house built since 1945 would have a basic DPC

DSAJ

The house was built in 1881

SG27

DSAJ wrote: »

The house was built in 1881

No DPC then! Old houses often need a slightly different approach to more modern houses. I've had some very good help from the people here: http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=5b09cfe310187abd3f60eb52af5842d3


Did the surveyor not pick on the damp when you bought the house?

DSAJ

It had been empty for a year or two so it was assumed it was just a bit damp from lack of heating and a bad winter I believe and not that there was an actual problem

pinkteapot

Did you get a survey done? If a professional surveyor said the damp was probably due to a bad winter and didn't at least recommend further investigation, you may have some comeback about them.

If it was just you assuming the damp wasn't a big problem then obviously that doesn't work!

NewtoDIY

First thing is not to panic. It is unpleasant but so is the drastic action of having a modern DPC treatment. Houses in the late Victorian period did have DPCs but as a previous poster has advised you, you need to check whether the outside ground level is higher than (or even within) your DPC. (Look for where the dark bricks start and finish).

If the alley and other ground level around your house is too high, it will have breached the DPC and you'll get rising damp. That is relatively easy to rectify without a modern chemical injection which is very often unnecessary.

One way to treat that is do dig around the perimeter to lower the ground level and create a kind of gravel channel - this is excellent for water drainage.

I found this pic from someone's blog which gives you an idea of how it is done:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZLQrvBT5Nds/TcDHEgz7y-I/AAAAAAAABlI/U5lb7RmJDeg/s1600/IMG_2773.JPG

I'm fairly sure your plaster will need to be replaced but the first thing is to determine why it is damp. If you're still unsure, then you need to call an INDEPENDENT damp surveyor - not someone affiliated to selling products.

Melaniep101

NewtoDIY wrote: »

First thing is not to panic. It is unpleasant but so is the drastic action of having a modern DPC treatment. Houses in the late Victorian period did have DPCs but as a previous poster has advised you, you need to check whether the outside ground level is higher than (or even within) your DPC. (Look for where the dark bricks start and finish).

If the alley and other ground level around your house is too high, it will have breached the DPC and you'll get rising damp. That is relatively easy to rectify without a modern chemical injection which is very often unnecessary.

One way to treat that is do dig around the perimeter to lower the ground level and create a kind of gravel channel - this is excellent for water drainage.

I found this pic from someone's blog which gives you an idea of how it is done:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZLQrvBT5Nds/TcDHEgz7y-I/AAAAAAAABlI/U5lb7RmJDeg/s1600/IMG_2773.JPG

I'm fairly sure your plaster will need to be replaced but the first thing is to determine why it is damp. If you're still unsure, then you need to call an INDEPENDENT damp surveyor - not someone affiliated to selling products.

Excellent post!

We did both points with our damp problem, called in an independent damp surveyor, and on his recommendation, dug channels/drains in the concrete that was bridging our DPC, and filled them with shingle.

NewtoDIY

Melaniep101 wrote: »

Excellent post!

We did both points with our damp problem, called in an independent damp surveyor, and on his recommendation, dug channels/drains in the concrete that was bridging our DPC, and filled them with shingle.

Melaniep101 - did you find that this eliminated the damp issue? It's something that I'm sure we need to do at our house but don't have the time. What did you do when it came to the drains? Did you leave them as they were and just fill in gravel up to their height or did you actually lower the whole ground level?

If you have any tips on how to do this properly, please do share them here. Thanks!