Would you expect work men to clean up afterwards?

JustAnotherSaver

Tonight was spent getting rid of the !!!! in the living room bagged up into rubble bags ready for dumping tomorrow.

11 bags in total. Must've been getting on somewhere near 1/4ton in that one spot.

When we finally cleared up the floor space we saw one floorboard had sunk. Strange that it was just one as if all that weight in 1 spot i would've thought it'd have done more.
There's some damage to the edging of the board. I don't know if this is from the weight or say a shovel or something. Not too sure. Maybe reading too much into it, but of all the area of that room for the rubbish to be piled, it was piled right over that floorboard that has 'sunk' while they've been working there.

Not the end of the world i suppose.

Strange that the floorboards around the fire are now wet/damp. Had a look underneath & some of the joists are quite wet too. I'm not saying this is the builders. Maybe it's condensation from the plaster drying out, but strange that it's localised to that specific spot & not elsewhere in the room or elsewhere on that joist or indeed any joist in that room.


Haven't got the radiators back on the walls yet either, so maybe lack of heat isn't helping? I don't know, i'm clearly far from an expert.

lessonlearned

1. Re sunken board - does it feel "spongey".

2. Re wet boards and joists. I doubt that it's just down to new plaster drying out or a temporary lack of heating. Sounds like this has been going on for a while. Unfortunately this does need to be investigated. Don't be tempted to ignore this.

You say the wet area is near the fireplace. Is it a working fireplace or was it boarded or bricked up. If closed off are there any air bricks.

If the chimney is no longer in use was it properly decommissioned and capped off. If it has not been capped then rain water could be your culprit.

If the fireplace is still open but not in use has the chimney been blocked by someone stuffing something up it to stop draughts.

Something like a chimney balloon or "chimney sheep" would be ok because there would still be a ventilation channel to maintain sufficient air flow. However, if someone has just shoved a load of pillows or textiles up there then there might be insufficient airflow.

Do you have a cellar - if so have you had a good poke about down there. Are there any air bricks or ventilation shafts. Are they clear of debris, have they been blocked up.

Can you post some pictures of the wet area so the good people on here can get a better idea of what you are dealing with. What age is the property.

I've just had exactly the same issue in both of our current projects.

In both cases the problem was caused by inadequate ventilation to the sub floor and similarly in both cases previous owners and tenants had blocked up or covered the air vents in the cellars in the mistaken belief that stopping the air flow would make the property warmer.

This seems to be a common mistake and is of course a fallacy.

Whilst it's a good idea to stop the worst of cold draughts buildings, especially older ones, do need to breathe so they need to be adequately ventilated. Blocking up air vents and stopping ventilation simply causes damp which will of course make the house even colder.

In both cases we have had to replace some joists and floorboards because the wet had caused them to rot.

One of our projects is a house which was built in 1758. In the early 60's it underwent a programme of refurbishment. The new owner undertaking the work at the time found that a soldier's uniform from WW1 was being used to block one of the chimneys. :rotfl:

Just edited to say that, as a matter of interest, after this dreadful wet winter both the national press and my trusty favourite builder have said the same thing. The extreme wet weather has caused record levels of complaints about damp properties. People who have never had any issues with damp before have reported that they have had problems this year.

Not talking about floods here - just damp. One of the main complaints has been penetrating damp caused by driving rain. North facing walls have been particularly vulnerable. A lot of people will be needing brickwork repointing this year.

JustAnotherSaver

No no, the board doesn't feel spongy. I also suspect folk may think it's worse than what it is. Perhaps sunken is an extreme word. I'll let the photo do the talking. It's just lower than the rest of the boards now, which to me is sunken, but it's not like it's dropped 10" or anything. Carpet over it will be fine.

I've been at the house today & i just feel totally dejected. Everything that can go wrong seems to & i've had to leave the (my ) wife at the house to do work as i'm just getting angrier & angrier & will end up breaking something soon so had to come away to calm down.

* Where the board has been dotted & dabbed on, we can see dabs on the lower section. I specifically asked them if this would happen as i was warned about it. They said no because the wall is not piddle-wet through (they were correct. It APPEARED dry once back to the brick work, however the original plaster on it was not) & also that they were tanking the walls & that it's on an internal party wall so will not show through. Well, it has. It was showing all over the place initially, but dried out. Dabs on the lower section returned a week or so later only to dry out & now they're there today again. I don't know whether it's not properly dried out yet & this is part & parcel, or whether we've just shelled out over £1,100 for nothing.
* I was lead to believe the other side of the chimney breast would also be tanked. Instead it was patch-plastered & bonded. There's whites on the plaster now. I am wondering if this is salts. Tasted kinda salty. If so i suspect this is going to wreck any painting/papering job ...... wasted money.
* The dark marking/staining/shadowing where the skim beads are still remains. Forums have suggested it needs drying out, but there's no shift. A rep at work suggested "the idiot hasn't put enough plaster on there".
* We've found today that our french doors leading from living room to diner now do not shut. They did before the plasterers came out. I've tried lining them up & can't for the life of me figure out why they're not shutting.

And we don't have a bottomless pocket to rectify this. Certainly not to do jobs twice. :mad:
It's just presenting the questions - where do we stop, where do we begin, what do we do. We try & get professionals out & things still go wrong. You can only put it down to experience for so long, but it rapidly gets expensive & ATEOTD we need a house to move into.
Next time we'll have carpeting & furniture in. If the walls need re-doing then based on the current experience, all that will be ruined.

Sorry for the rant. Back on to responding to your post...

You say the wet area is near the fireplace. Is it a working fireplace or was it boarded or bricked up. If closed off are there any air bricks.

If the chimney is no longer in use was it properly decommissioned and capped off. If it has not been capped then rain water could be your culprit.

If the fireplace is still open but not in use has the chimney been blocked by someone stuffing something up it to stop draughts.

The fire is a gas fire which is usable but isn't used. There are a few air bricks for sub-floor ventilation - 3 or 4 of them.
The flaunching on the chimney was knackered so we recently got someone to fix this.

Do you have a cellar

Nope

Can you post some pictures of the wet area so the good people on here can get a better idea of what you are dealing with. What age is the property.

1932 & damn, i thought you'd asked for photos of the floorboard (i was going off memory) & not the damp area. As i've taken them i may as well post them, but as i say, carpet over will sort this...





Right now the wet floor & the floorboards is the least of my concerns. The state of the walls are a big problem. I am hoping that it's all part of the drying out process as it's been 3-4 weeks, however i'm sure that this is long enough & that these dabs are going to continue to show through & just be an ever present problem. Unfortunately we don't have the money to put this right.

lessonlearned

Yes I can see that the floor board appears to be slightly "sunken". I'm assuming it was level before.

Before you go to the expense of decorating and putting carpets down I would suggest that you prise up the board to double check everything is ok and the joist hasn't shifted or even split.

If the joist hassuffered you might not need to replace it - you might get away with just adding some extra support. They are several methods of doing this - all relatively straight forward. You could get a joiner to do this but if you can get easy access to the joist you could do this yourself.

(Have you bought yourself a good DIY manual yet???:rotfl:)

There is bound to be a u-tube tutorial. My son always googles "How to build ….whatever" and he usually finds what he is looking for.

I've just had a couple of joists replaced - between an exterior wall and the fireplace. In our case it was because the cellar airbricks had been deliberately blocked up.

Even replacing the odd joist isn't a major job so shouldn't be too expensive to get a joiner in. It took our guy a couple of hours.

Re the damp near the fireplace - sounds like the chimney should be ok then, plenty of air bricks. Sounds like the damp is coming up through the sub floor. Is it near an exterior wall or an internal wall. You mentioned slugs in another thread so obviously there is a an issue somewhere.

Did the survey highlight anything in particular or was it just the usual vague catch all - "evidence of damp, needs investigation".

Plaster generally dries out in a week or so.

You cannot tell merely by looking at a brick wall whether it is fully dry or whether there is damp present. The only way to be sure is to drill into the mortar and take a sample. All very forensic ……..

What is the mortar like - if it is soft and crumbly and you can pull bits out easily then the brickwork needs repointing.

As you will be aware this winter has been one of the wettest for a long time. There have reports of people experiencing issues with damp in their properties when they have never had problems in the past - especially penetrating damp - the sort that is caused by driving rain soaking brickwork and getting in through the mortar.

The problems you are experiencing may just be a combination of the extreme wet weather and the fact that you are not living in the property and it is not being aired and heated.

Of course there may be something a bit more sinister going on. It might be worth adopting a wait and see approach.

You could also try using dehumidifiers for a couple of weeks and see if they help speed up the drying out process.

If the de-humidifiers work and then the damp comes back again when you stop using them then at least you will know where you stand.

As for the doors - do you have a spirit level to check that they have been hung properly. You might just need to adjust the hinges.

If they have been hung properly could the wood have swollen a little with the damp. If they are just "sticking" try rubbing the edges with candle wax.

moneyistooshorttomention

Am I interpreting correctly, in that you are wondering how long plaster takes to dry?

I'm having every room in my house replastered as I do them. From this, it seems to be the case that new plaster takes about a week to dry out so far.

Thankfully, I'm not noticing any damp in my place. I note Lesson Learned's comment about people who don't normally get damp having it this winter. Well...in that case...I should be fine then. No damp to start with and no damp after the winter we've just had:). If it ain't damp by now...then it shouldn't ever be.:T

lessonlearned

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Thankfully, I'm not noticing any damp in my place. I note Lesson Learned's comment about people who don't normally get damp having it this winter. Well...in that case...I should be fine then. No damp to start with and no damp after the winter we've just had:). If it ain't damp by now...then it shouldn't ever be.:T

Sounds good - sounds like you've bought a nice house - well when you've licked it into shape.;)

DS2 is currently De-artexing the walls of the landing, staircase and hall - horrible job but the more we can do ourselves the less we have to pay out to the trades.

He hacks off the plaster. I keep the refreshments coming and bag up the debris ready to take the tip. I'm far too mean to shell out £200 for a skip:rotfl:

Today we had a little break from the plaster dust, took advantage of the lovely weather and made a start on the garden. Planted up a load of bargain basement shrubs that I have been nurturing.

Garden looks better already.

DS2 having a week off work so we will crack on.

moneyistooshorttomention

Ditto to being too mean (trans. broke) to shell out for a skip. No chance..:rotfl:

Glad someone thinks it's a nice house I've got here (potentially:cool:). Will be half way to habitable shortly now...thank goodness at last. Some "diamonds" take a lot of unearthing don't they?:cool:

Will soon have first official visitors for a tour of Work To Date and see what they make of it...

lessonlearned

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Glad someone thinks it's a nice house I've got here (potentially:cool:). Will be half way to habitable shortly now...thank goodness at last. Some "diamonds" take a lot of unearthing don't they?:cool:

..

The best "diamonds" are often the ones that no-one else spots or wants.!!! It just takes vision.

We got the keys to prop 2 on 18th December. Started work in earnest on 8th Feb - aiming to be more or less done by end April.

It's just a 2/3 bed Victorian terraced in what has been until recently the "wrong" side of the town.

Thanks to the ripple effect it's now up and coming.;) Just this week I've noticed scaffolding and skips are mushrooming up all over the place.

Looks like this particular "diamond" is going to be a good one - as long as I can keep the budget in check.

As always we've hit a couple of snags - complete rewire needed, some damp, and a couple of rotten joists, a fair amount of replastering. More or less what you expect in a house this age.

We did decide to go for a "luxury" bathroom which was a bit naughty because technically we could have kept what was there. However it is a show stopper and I think we did well at £3500.

I will claw back some of the budget in the kitchen. The cabinets are good so will just replace the doors and worktops - it will save a fair bit and help balance the books!!.

Just washed the plaster dust out of my hair and now off to visit OH.

JustAnotherSaver

lessonlearned wrote: »

Before you go to the expense of decorating and putting carpets down I would suggest that you prise up the board to double check everything is ok and the joist hasn't shifted or even split.

I'll probably never get the damn thing back down, but i'll have a look

(Have you bought yourself a good DIY manual yet???:rotfl:)

There is bound to be a u-tube tutorial. My son always googles "How to build ….whatever" and he usually finds what he is looking for.

Nope i haven't. Like your son i rely on youtube.

I did this for removing a radiator. Not sure if you caught my post this time last week but i did what youtube told me. I'm now £80 lighter after having to call a plumber out in an emergency.

Like i say, if something can go wrong - it does with me. That isn't me being doom & gloom. I could easily list off all the jobs i've done that've gone wrong. I'll go ahead with the ones that went right though to kick start...
1. Yup, the first job i did right with no problems is yet to happen. There you go.

Is it near an exterior wall or an internal wall. You mentioned slugs in another thread so obviously there is a an issue somewhere.

The damp is at the base of the hearth which is on the internal party wall

Did the survey highlight anything in particular or was it just the usual vague catch all - "evidence of damp, needs investigation".

It stated where some damp patches were. Once the wallpaper was off it became apparent that rather than it being in patches, it was a band right along the middle of the party wall.

Plaster generally dries out in a week or so.

What about bonding? Ours is taking a while...



Also this is the skim beading....





However there is ONE perfect one...


That one probably gets the most sun, but others in the sunlight are also stained/shadowy.

I've been told online that they need to dry out. Well it's been 3 or so weeks now & i'm still waiting.
I've read people say get some stain block paint on there, people say don't, people say get some oil primer on there, people say don't.

All i know is i don't know why it's doing that or what to do with it.

A builders merchant rep said they've not put enough plaster on.

What is the mortar like - if it is soft and crumbly and you can pull bits out easily then the brickwork needs repointing.

Mortar? The cement between the brick work? If that's what you mean then it was pretty solid.

As for the doors - do you have a spirit level to check that they have been hung properly. You might just need to adjust the hinges.

The doors weren't taken off. They shut before but don't now.

This is the closest they come to shutting...




We thought it was the left, because when trying to latch it at the top, it hits the rim & then beds into its lock whereas the right just slots straight in.
However when going into the diner & closing them individually, the left shuts flush nice, but the right doesn't.

JustAnotherSaver

lessonlearned wrote: »

I'm far too mean to shell out £200 for a skip:rotfl:

Agreed. I'm also not paying to take to a skip.

I loaned the van from work, bagged up all the plaster (16 rammed rubble bags in total) & loaded the van with that, all the waste wood, the carpeting, the underlay oh & the 4 huge chunks of plaster that were too big for bags.

I have access to those big car park bins so the carpeting went in there, the wood to my mum for the fire & the plaster to the skips at a builders merchant who use it for mixing with fill.





Back on the topic of our house, for a while now we've regretted buying this. We think we rushed into it. We're also gutted that we didn't land another house we wanted, which we were originally going for. We were going to view it & offer on it in the afternoon when we got a call in the morning to say it'd sold.
We went for the house we got, had our offer accepted. A few weeks later the original house came back on the market due to a marriage break up.

We arranged a 2nd viewing on it just out of interest (the 1st viewing was a joke - estate agent didn't have key to the garage & we were rushed around), but we didn't push it due to having had our offer accepted on our house. A few days before our viewing it sold again. It really was at a steal. It was up for £30k-£40k less than it was bought for, was in a very nice area, very quiet & a stones throw from where i live now. It was built in the year 2000 & no wooden boards with water underneath either The driveway had room for about 4-5 cars with a 20x10 garage too.

I know there's naff all we can do about it now, but doesn't stop you thinking - we made a mistake.