Damp disaster

Melaniep101

NewtoDIY wrote: »

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!

It's a bit early to tell definitively, as we had it done in May, and it's been a good summer! We don't have any mould on the skirtings like we did last year, but we're keeping a close eye on it. I think there is an improvement, but we'll know for sure a bit later into the Winter.

We had some lovely Polish workman in who came and cut away about a foot of concrete right the way around the house, took them an afternoon (3 of them) and cost £350. May have been too much to pay but they did a neat job, and compared to the £3k quoted for a new DPC it was a drop in the ocean! They just cut around the drains, and we filled the gravel to the level that the concrete would have been originally. It really was a very quick solution (and relatively inexpensive) given that it was a fairly major worry for us!

Hope that helps.

NewtoDIY

Melaniep101 wrote: »

It's a bit early to tell definitively, as we had it done in May, and it's been a good summer! We don't have any mould on the skirtings like we did last year, but we're keeping a close eye on it. I think there is an improvement, but we'll know for sure a bit later into the Winter.

We had some lovely Polish workman in who came and cut away about a foot of concrete right the way around the house, took them an afternoon (3 of them) and cost £350. May have been too much to pay but they did a neat job, and compared to the £3k quoted for a new DPC it was a drop in the ocean! They just cut around the drains, and we filled the gravel to the level that the concrete would have been originally. It really was a very quick solution (and relatively inexpensive) given that it was a fairly major worry for us!

Hope that helps.

Thanks for this! That sounds likes exactly what I need to do here also! That's a very good price for something that could potentially save thousands in damage costs.

SG27

Our internal ground level is lower than outside and with have no DPC. So we have a aco drain that runs around the side of the house. I would say it would be better to have something that channels the water away rather than leaving it sitting in the gully.

Jaynne

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.

This is called a french drain by the way. While we didn't have this sort of problem when we brought the house the surveyor said we should have one as the block driveway that had been built was in danger of causing damp.

Not that there were signs we could see of damp before but there still isn't any