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

John_Pierpoint

I am amazed that someone can buy this load of trouble, without the problems coming to light before exchange of contracts. There is a section on MSE all about housebuying sources of information.
.
I would spare an hour or two before even going to look at a house and compile all the information, and more, that used to be in the HIP. One can make the best of the pathetically short visit some sellers and their agents allow a potential purchaser, who intends to spent a large chunk of their future life living there.

If you have got a magnifying glass you can check out what used to be where the house now is on here [you can also check if you were a likely Russian target]

http://www.old-maps.co.uk/index.html

JustAnotherSaver

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

You are talking 4kpounds to fix this forevever, or 2k for a deviation of the issue which will come back and bite.

If accurate then £4k is not a lot really.

I now think you have exhausted, with all due respect, the topic, we can't help further unless you decide to act

All help has been greatly appreciated. I hope nobody takes offense to this, but it would be pretty irresponsible to go on the advice on what someone on the internet said. What you guys are telling me makes sense & i like the idea, but at the same time, for all i know you could be no more qualified than my milkman.

Basically what i'm saying is, i could contact a builder & say XYZ & he'll just do it because that's what i'm paying him to do. I could contact a damp man & he could come & talk to me about damp. An electrician to talk to me about electrics & a plumber to move the plumbing 'somewhere'.
My point is, when i open the yellow pages, who do i turn to to get them to come out & say actually yes, that is what you need to do here & i'll put my name on that.

Also, unless i've missed it (quite possibly), i don't remember anyone saying how important it is to find out the origin of this water. All we know at the moment is it's coming in from somewhere and there's a reason it's stopping at 4.5".
I, rightly or wrongly, would've thought it pretty vital to find out the origin. Maybe i'm wrong & maybe the origin doesn't matter.

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I am amazed that someone can buy this load of trouble, without the problems coming to light before exchange of contracts. There is a section on MSE all about housebuying sources of information.
.
I would spare an hour or two before even going to look at a house and compile all the information, and more, that used to be in the HIP. One can make the vest of the pathetically short visit some sellers and their agents allow a potential purchaser who intends to spent a large chunk of their future life living there.

If you have got a magnifying glass you can check out what used to be where the house now is on here [you can also check if you were a likely Russian target]

http://www.old-maps.co.uk/index.html

Thanks for the link.

As for the top section, i get the feeling it's a sort of told you so moment. Never a fan of those as i don't find them to be constructive. What's done is done & we just need to make the best of it.

fluffymuffy

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

...for all i know you could be no more qualified than my milkman.

Next time ask your milkman.

cyclonebri1

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

If accurate then £4k is not a lot really.


All help has been greatly appreciated. I hope nobody takes offense to this, but it would be pretty irresponsible to go on the advice on what someone on the internet said. What you guys are telling me makes sense & i like the idea, but at the same time, for all i know you could be no more qualified than my milkman.

But you are actually bordering on offending people now.
I actually don't think you are intending too, but........

I have several others have spent a lot of time to try to help.
What you have said in the bold bit is exactly what I told you earlier, we can only give you ideas off the possible fixes, I for 1 do not like to call it advice, more opening your eyes to the options available to you.

Fluffy gave you her credentials.
I may have no more idea than your milkman, but actually, I do.
To give you my background, I'm the most keen DIYer you could ever meet. I have done every build task apart from complete homes. I was an involved in a small local building company for a while.
And when I wasn't doing that I ended up as the Chief Mechanical and Electrical engineer for a manufacturing company, I covered 3 separate sites with all related responsibilities, hence why I came at this from the industrial side initially.

But taking the smear of ingratitude out of your last post, yes, you have all the info we can give, you decide, we have only tired to make you aware of what is likely needed and tried to point you in the direction of who can physically help you.

I will say in your defence that your position regarding the "lake" whilst not ultra rare, isn't common. The measures taken by sellers, recent decor etc, does make it hard to see through to the issues or problems that a potential purchase holds, but it's all spilt milk/water under the bridge. My only comments relate to your present questions not why you are in that position.

Good luck, I'd leave it there.;)

JustAnotherSaver

To be honest there's little i can do. No offense was meant but if it was taken then i can only apologise.

It's like the leaky roof thread i had going on. People said it looked like X, it looked like Y, it looked like Z ........... but, get a professional, don't spend money based on what we've said on an internet forum.

Also, it's very difficult to tell from words on a screen the meaning behind them. As i say, i meant no offense but it doesn't mean it was received that way. Had we had this discussion in person i'm positive it would've been taken as it was meant.

To flip that one on its head - take fluffymuffy's last post there. Words on a screen. For all i know that could've been put there for 1 of 2 ways. Way 1 being got the hump. Way 2 being nothing more than a joke. I hope the latter but if not then i can only repeat what i said at the very beginning of this post.


Anyway, on a more positive (although probably temporarily) note ... i headed to the house this morning after it had been raining some again last night.
Was a strange one when i lifted the boards - the water level was no longer 4.5", in fact there was not a total covering of water at all (there were sections of floor that didn't have water on them & a good amount of floor at that).

Anyway, to move things forward, I think where we need to go from here is....

* Get an electrician out & price up wiring in properly to a switch above ground level as advised here
* Ask said electrician if he'd also fit a new sump pump (question: are those 'dirty water pump' things the exact same??) If so price this. If not then get a plumber to price this.
* Consider possibility of having the new pump running along side the current pump. At any rate, consideration to a battery backup pump in event of power cut.

That'd be the total pricing for the sump pump route.

Then...

* Get [Bob the Builder - correct tradesman?] to price up going fluffymuffy's route with Optiroc & solid flooring.
* Ask plumber from earlier about rerouting the plumbing above floor level
* Compare the total pricing for the two options & see what we can afford from there.

All that is aside from going the plastic sheeting & plasterboard route that you see them use in the following video: http://www.timberwise.co.uk/our-services/basement-waterproofing/a-basement-waterproofing-project-from-start-to-finish/

Thanks again for advising/opening our eyes


Oh i mentioned the cracking of the houses in the upstairs corners. The Mrs mapped out the houses we viewed. Quite interesting. I've blanked out road names so nobody can come & stalk me We're at the bottom. The house at the top had really big cracks & we're disagreeing on whether the middle house had them. I say no, she says yes...

cyclonebri1

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Oh i mentioned the cracking of the houses in the upstairs corners. The Mrs mapped out the houses we viewed. Quite interesting. I've blanked out road names so nobody can come & stalk me We're at the bottom. The house at the top had really big cracks & we're disagreeing on whether the middle house had them. I say no, she says yes...

Sorry, but I really don't know what you are now getting at ???? seismology really isn't my bag

JustAnotherSaver

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Sorry, but I really don't know what you are now getting at ???? seismology really isn't my bag

I'm not actually 'getting at' anything.

I by my own admission have a poor memory so i also use being online to note things down for my own reference as well. Not just this forum, but any.

It was just something we found interesting. There is this supposed lake/river/beck that runs through the streets. I say 'supposed' because no map we have found shows it.
However if it does exist, and we were told it runs through where our house is located & a few houses either side of us are also effected (if what we've been told is to be believed) then we wondered if this cracking in the walls could be in relation.

Our HB-survey didn't mention anything about movement, whereas the damp champ who came out said there had been.

Just a wondering out loud, nothing more.


Oh & the dry spell was short lived. Got there a few hours later & the water back to normal. Drained it. Painted one room & it was well on its way being back to normal.

Strange then how it was drained yesterday, left overnight & this morning was quite dry.

John_Pierpoint

I wonder if it is not a leaking sewer, but a leaking surface water drain, possibly following the line of a field ditch. That is why the "flooding" reappears after rain?
(I am built on Essex clay and can have a similar but nothin like as severe a problem if I forget to bail out my "sump" that catches rainwater heading for the side of the house.We are "enjoying" a particularly soggy run up to Xmas and are already suffering rain run off in the local area. Some people will come back from am Xmas break to a flooded property by the look of the forecast.)

The basement conversion in the film, is the expensive option of property enhancement [The advertiser should have had the courage to name the cost of it]

The rule of thumb is extend out the back, convert the loft, and only then consider doing anything under the ground floor. However in Central London the numbers add up for almost any improvement; even a pop up "garage" in the small front (?) garden.

Talking of "Homes under the Hammer" (that exposes "Martin" most days on the BBC), there was one featuring a Victorian property in Canterbury, where a section of ground floor was raised to avoid the cellar conversion requiring excavations.
The rear garden sloped down towards Canterbury's river. Presumably the cellar was still above the flood line as far as Canterbury's local authority was concerned.

The Victorian houses in London often have a raised roadway because the builders dumped all the clay from the footings into what was to become the roadway. So the floor of the cellar/servants working floor was at the level of the back garden..

JustAnotherSaver

Just to note - the level doesn't just raise after good rain. It raises anyway. It did it the other day when it was windy, but not wet.

I think i'll get that drain dye stuff http://www.diy.com/nav/fix/plumbing-central-heating/central-heating-supplies/central_heating_leak_detection/Rothenberg-Green-Drain-Tracing-Dye-11247986?skuId=11758691 to see if it shows anything when the water pools under the floorboards.

At the same time i'm going to get in touch with the solicitor to see if there's anything he can help with and also the water board to see if they can shed light on the origin.

I re-read the damp report last night & it mentions having the drive dug out & then sloping away from the house...
...considering the house is a good amount lower than the road, i'm really lost as to how that one is even possible. To build a runway from the bottom of the house to the road can only be one gradient, which inevitably will have water running towards the house. I know we can install drain channels, but that surely has to be the only direction water could possibly take.
Still with the issue of drive modernisation having to be permeable otherwise we face requiring planning permission then we're back to the drawing board on that one.

zaax

I wonder is this is a fracture line.

A friend of mine has a victorian house, during the 2nd WW a bomb was dropped on a pub car park 200m away, and blast followed a fracture in the soil and damaged his foundations. The house has damp problems to this day.