J.A.S.'s fixing the damp & swimming pool in the house thread....

JustAnotherSaver

fluffymuffy wrote: »

Why are there two threads on this?

The exciting photos showing how the whole road drains down the steep drive and into the airbrick are on the other thread.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4840812

One was questioning whether there's damp on a wall & how you go about sorting it. The other was asking how to locate an independent surveyor. Still, not the end of the world really. We're all still alive (i hope).

Interestingly though, the hall doesn't really seem damp. Ok the Peter Cox salesman got his toy out & it started beeping, but it doesn't look or feel damp. It's the living room that does.

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Ok, look in no way am I suggesting you need a sump pump installing,

I'm not saying you are. Apparently we already have one installed.

Carpet is coming up at the weekend anyway so if the floorboards are fine to lift then i'll have a look then.

but some obnoxious neighbour involved the environmental health dept.

What's a street without a good busybody?

zaax wrote: »

if you can't hear it maybe is has packed up. They do last years but not for ever.

I don't expect anything electrical to last forever.

Also, since we've bought the house there hasn't been any heavy rainfall. A bit of rain yes, but nothing to get excited about. Plus we haven't spent long at the house. A few hours here & there.

zaax wrote: »

Are you on clay?

Good question. Sorry, i don't know the answer though.

zaax

Have you just brought this house?

JustAnotherSaver

zaax wrote: »

Have you just brought this house?

Nope, but i've just bought it . Had it just over a month now. Why?

No offence intended, but i see it all the time on the tinterweb & it makes me curious as hell - why do people say brought instead of bought? I've never found myself actually saying (or spelling) it that way.

Again, no offence intended, you just happen to be the one i've asked as i see it online all over.

fluffymuffy

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Nope, but i've just bought it . Had it just over a month now. Why?

No offence intended, but i see it all the time on the tinterweb & it makes me curious as hell - why do people say brought instead of bought? I've never found myself actually saying (or spelling) it that way.

Again, no offence intended, you just happen to be the one i've asked as i see it online all over.

My SIL says "Brought" instead of "Bought". She's from Stoke on Trent. Maybe it's a regional thing?

cyclonebri1

So yes you can lower the local ground water level if you can find out what the problem is, and sometimes your house is located at the bottom of this small marshy area.[/QUOTE]


Ok, you can't practically lower a water table in a domestic situation and if you could, your next issue will be subsidence do to shrinkage, especially if you tried it on clay subsoils.

There is another interesting phenomenon I've read of whereby the water table is often higher on local peaks than it is in the troughs.
Something to do with soft clay being pushed up and top soil being thinned and eroded over time. Quite the opposite to what you'd expect I thought.

JustAnotherSaver

Spoke to a builder today about this air brick malarkey.

He also mentioned the 2 course of brick thing, but said in the UK it can be lowered to 1 course if [insert explanation i've forgotten here].

He also talked of it depending whether the air brick is below or above the DPC regards problems because of it. God my memory is terrible.

Though he did agree that putting in a drain channel would be the best idea.

JustAnotherSaver

Not sure if looking under the boards has been mentioned in this thread or the other thread as i'm not skimming through. I'll keep it to the one thread & use this one as it's about the wall....

Lifted the carpet today & had a look under the floorboards. There's a good covering of water to the front of the house that's for sure. Maybe a few inch at a guess (didn't have a stick to measure depth).

We can see a stack of mini brick walls under the boards scattered about. It looks like the water level is to the lower course. Perhaps 2-3 inch i'm guessing.

However with the wet/dark line on the walls i would use that to guess the water level does/can/has got to 4 brick courses high, leaving another 4 course before you hit the floorboards.

Something to worry about? I'm not sure. Normal? I don't know.

From what we could tell, we spotted no wet marks around where their sofa was, which therefore doesn't back up the neighbours story that our sofa area gets piddle wet through under heavy rain.
There was wet patches to the front of the house, which would suggest the leaky radiator is correct.

Anyway, photos.....

Brick wall doesn't look so high but from what i could count it was at least 8 course high. As i say, the water level is currently a few inch.


I am hazarding a guess that this is the sump pump. If so it looks very cruddy. There is a layer of what looks like, to be honest, crap, all around the floor area. It can't be crap otherwise it'd stink but it's crappy colour. This thing is sat a bit deeper & this is towards the front (roadside) end of the house...


Tried to direct the camera towards the front of the house in line with the above image but didn't pick up much...


The only other section of the floor that can be lifted is at the opposite end of the living room under the smaller radiator in the corner.
From here we could see the water level was there, but not so high...


Along the next wall (which would be the extension wall - the old exterior wall) i saw some crystal like stuff...


And a shot from where this was...

cyclonebri1

The crap you refer to is simply silt, it's washing out of the soil under your home.

You do indeed have a pump in a sump:D.

The white stuff is the salts in the bricks being dissolved and then forming as minute crystals at the surface as it dries, efflorescence, it's called spelling permitted, and is harmless but an indicator of brickwork that does get damp. Not that you need any indications with a lake under there.

You simply have to get that system repaired and working, sump may need to be lower than is, an expert in these matters needs consulting.

What is certain is that with that happening under your floorboards, water vapour will be permeating through the floor board gaps and floor covering and the air in the room must be very moist. Many of your issues could just as easily be down to condensation as damp.;)

zaax

Yes as mentioned the water needs to be removed (pump replaced) before christmas, if the water 'goes off' you will have amazing problems . You will need to check for dry rot and the drive lowered very soon.

JustAnotherSaver

Update time. & from reading your two posts there, this guy seems to be in the area of being correct.

Now you'll have grasped by now i don't know anything about this, so i swallow what i'm told. I'm more comfortable with what the independent survey fella said today than what Peter Cox told me the other week...
...although to be fair, the independent chap was able to look under the floorboards whereas Peter Cox wasn't (due to carpet still down). Would PC have concluded differently? Maybe, maybe not.

I'll need to note this down before i forget any more than i already have....

* You guys are right (or at least this independent chap agrees with you), the water under the boards IS the cause of the walls being as they are.
* Obviously he can see the pump better than that photo shows you guys, but he says it shouldn't have crud all around it & it should be in its own bucket. He says we need to check to see if it's working (how?) but a new one is cheap enough (£50 +/-). As for requiring to be deeper, the floor is fairly level & you can see where it's been dug out to house the pump, so it's already under the level floor. I know nothing about this but i don't see why it'd need to be deeper still..??

* He could smell the damp in the air, i couldn't, but then he knows what he's smelling.
* He did talk about the water making the air moist (or something to that effect - on the lines of what you said). So while the DPC will stop the damp penetrating the brickwork from the bottom, it doesn't stop the moisture all around due to the lake there getting above the DPC level & this in turn then rises through the wall. So while the DPC will be doing its job, it can't solve everything.
* He says we need ventilation under there. Good air flow. I asked what & he said air bricks to channel air under there. Ideally piping running all the way through from the air brick rather than just an air brick placed at the front of the house. He said the concrete flooring in the extension at the end of the living room wont help.
* He did say drilling through the party wall to help with airflow is another possibility (regards helping airflow), but said that this is pretty much very naughty.
* He talked about the use of cavity trays & weep vents in the extension, of which i have forgotten. I do remember he said the weep vents can block. He also said builders can be very slapdash & take shortcuts & not bother.

* The wall that separates the living room & hall may well need doing. He said the plaster may be newer than the party wall & in time it will go the same way. It depends how pro-active we want to be as to whether we sort that too.
* As we all have agreed - he said whoever did the drive is a bloody numpty (regards the air bricks) & that we really need to sort that by way of ACO channeling ASAP.
* He said we should/could remove a brick on the side of the house (how?) to see if the cavity walling has collected crap at its base, which will trap moisture. If clean then joy. If not then it'll need pulling out & the cavity walling made good again.

* He didn't seem to be a fan of chemical solutions & as already said, neither am i. I much prefer the idea of something physical.

On to that came one possible solution....

* He suggested studded plastic sheeting for the walls & then plasterboarding on to this. He said if you go the chemical route, it's just delaying the inevitable because you're not solving the problem (under the boards). The dado rail & indeed all woodwork (minus floor boards) will need to be removed (no problem). Down side here is it will jut out & so the sockets will need looking at, the coving will need looking at & the fire surround will need to come off. The hearth should also get levelled out he said as it slopes backwards.
* He said the plastic sheeting membrane & plasterboard approach will stop the damp effecting your decorating. If we ever sold then a damp meter would never pick up damp & the wall is going to do whatever it's going to do. We could chip away at the plaster first or leave it as is. He suggested leaving as is as it gives a level surface to begin with & no point in creating needless work.

* Regards the lake underneath, one solution he gave was filling with limestone to the highest point it will ever reach & then putting visqueen with bricks on top on top of the limestone. He did say that there's a gap between the boards & limestone but i forget the distance. 6 inch comes to mind but this could be for something else. He said if we don't limestone high enough then this could end up being disastrous. That's just one idea.

* He said regards the sump pump - one problem with this is it can also remove bits of the soil with it, which can then result in movement. Bit worrying, but then what do you do?!

And i'm afraid that is as much as i can remember right now. He's going to do his report & email it.

Whether he is dead on the money or not i don't know, as i don't know this game. I am however more comfortable with the outcome of this visit than i was with the Peter Cox visit.