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Damp in cavity wall
Fierybiscuits
Posts: 15 Forumite
Hi all,
My partner and I have a 1930s house which we’ve slowly been renovating for the past 18 months. We’ve had to have pretty much every single wall re-plastered (everywhere was wallpapered or timber-clad and the plaster fell off when it was removed), and everything dried out fine apart from a large patch of damp at the base of our stairs in the hall.
I investigated outside and found that the DPC had been breached by the addition of slabs and concrete laid on top of the original driveway, so we dug this back last summer and waited to see if the wall dried out. The patch started to shrink a little (maybe a mm or two every week), but when we took the skirting board off to help with the process, we found a load of bits of lead haphazardly shoved in the first brick course above the (solid) hallway floor. Can only assume one of the previous owners tried to form a makeshift DPC and this has been an ongoing problem for many years. Water was dripping off the lead onto the floor, so I decided to remove a couple of bricks and was met with oodles of damp sand in the cavity. Then proceeded to fill two buckets full of sand, rubble, mortar etc. having cleared it as far as I could reach both ways and taken it below the external DPC. We’re now just letting the bricks dry out before we put them back in.
The problem is that now we’ve noticed that the cupboard beneath the stairs (so along the same wall), now has damp patches in the fresh plaster, but not at ground level (more like a metre up and across the wall horizontally). Obviously, I couldn’t reach as far as this, so I’m now considering removing bricks in this area and clearing more debris, but the fact it doesn’t seem to have risen from the ground confuses me, as does the fact it’s appeared more noticeable since I took remedial action in the original area. Could anything other than the breached DPC and rubbish-filled cavity be causing it? I’ve read up about salts and think we need to treat the original damp area with neutralising solution, as it had gone white around the patch of damp plaster. However, there’s no evidence of salts in this new patch (not yet anyway). I’m loathed to knock anymore plaster off if I can help it. There are a couple of perpends that need repointing at ground level (where we removed the concrete breaching the DPC), but I can’t see any other problems. Can anyone advise?
Many thanks.
My partner and I have a 1930s house which we’ve slowly been renovating for the past 18 months. We’ve had to have pretty much every single wall re-plastered (everywhere was wallpapered or timber-clad and the plaster fell off when it was removed), and everything dried out fine apart from a large patch of damp at the base of our stairs in the hall.
I investigated outside and found that the DPC had been breached by the addition of slabs and concrete laid on top of the original driveway, so we dug this back last summer and waited to see if the wall dried out. The patch started to shrink a little (maybe a mm or two every week), but when we took the skirting board off to help with the process, we found a load of bits of lead haphazardly shoved in the first brick course above the (solid) hallway floor. Can only assume one of the previous owners tried to form a makeshift DPC and this has been an ongoing problem for many years. Water was dripping off the lead onto the floor, so I decided to remove a couple of bricks and was met with oodles of damp sand in the cavity. Then proceeded to fill two buckets full of sand, rubble, mortar etc. having cleared it as far as I could reach both ways and taken it below the external DPC. We’re now just letting the bricks dry out before we put them back in.
The problem is that now we’ve noticed that the cupboard beneath the stairs (so along the same wall), now has damp patches in the fresh plaster, but not at ground level (more like a metre up and across the wall horizontally). Obviously, I couldn’t reach as far as this, so I’m now considering removing bricks in this area and clearing more debris, but the fact it doesn’t seem to have risen from the ground confuses me, as does the fact it’s appeared more noticeable since I took remedial action in the original area. Could anything other than the breached DPC and rubbish-filled cavity be causing it? I’ve read up about salts and think we need to treat the original damp area with neutralising solution, as it had gone white around the patch of damp plaster. However, there’s no evidence of salts in this new patch (not yet anyway). I’m loathed to knock anymore plaster off if I can help it. There are a couple of perpends that need repointing at ground level (where we removed the concrete breaching the DPC), but I can’t see any other problems. Can anyone advise?
Many thanks.
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