Damp patches on inside of gable (?) wall

Alnat1

I showed hubby, who worked for a damp company for 25 years. He suggests start by knocking off all the render along where the large crack is visible so you can see how bad the problem is. If water has been getting in for some time it may have blown the render below the crack, remove any that is damaged. Better to take more off now than having a recurring problem later. Investigate if there are any other cracksand do the same.

Get some quotes in once you can see how much needs repairing. A couple of weeks of warm, dry weather should dry out the walls inside and out and then you can get the repair done. Once the outside wall is sound you should be able to redecorate without any problems. He wouldn't recommend any damp treatment as it appears to all be water ingress.

shiraz99

stuart45 said:

New DPC Number4

Missed that bit. My faith has been restored 😉 

Ben1989

Thank you all for your comments. You confirmed my instinct of surely stopping the ingress is more beneficial. He mentioned it will take years for the plaster to dry which I just don't really believe. 

Would home insurance cover this?

Alnat1

Doubtful, they would expect you to maintain the general repair of the structure.

We did claim for a flat roof leak back in the 90s, insurance would only pay for damage to furnishings (bed, carpet etc) and a small allowance for redecorating. We had to pay ourselves for external roof repair and re-boarding and plastering the ceiling, luckily hubby, being a damper, was a decent plasterer and had mates who were roofers.

FreeBear

Ben1989 said: mentioned it will take years for the plaster to dry which I just don't really believe.

Rule of thumb for a wall to dry properly is one month for every 25mm of thickness, so a 9" solid brick wall will take (drum roll) nine months to dry out. But if waterproofing gunk has been slapped on a damp wall, it would take longer, much longer. But the plaster, being on the surface should still dry to some extent fairly quickly.

As this is a maintenance issue, insurance will not cover it. Unless of course, you can find a water pipe buried in the wall or floor that is leaking (unlikely).

stuart45

Ben1989 said:

Thank you all for your comments. You confirmed my instinct of surely stopping the ingress is more beneficial. He mentioned it will take years for the plaster to dry which I just don't really believe. 

Would home insurance cover this?

A solid brick wall can take a fair bit of time to dry out. The moisture can't escape easily through the external render, so comes out of the internal plaster. Even when the damp patches on the plaster dry out there will still be moisture in the brickwork that will come through later. Also damp brickwork is colder, so these areas will be the first to get condensation.
Damp companies hack off and put a waterproof render on the wall before a skim, so it looks like he problem has been solved for a while.

Ben1989

So how would this be approached? Would a rendering company hack off the render then leave to dry for a number of months? But obviously then there's full exposure to the elements. How do you dry the wall out and then render?

stuart45

The external render can be hacked off and rendered or repaired straight away. The internal brickwork is better off being left to dry out if it's hacked off.

Ben1989

When we get rendering done the internal plaster will remain on the wall. Can it dry that way?

stuart45

It will dry out in time, it just takes longer.