Rising Damp

FreeBear

You need a plumber that can do a pressure test of the suspect pipes - This will mean draining down the CH system, and disconnecting a few of the radiators. Cap the ends of the suspect pipes, and then pressurise. The pipes may need to be left for a few hours to see how much the pressure drops.

If you lift the flooring, there may well be a damp patch around the area were a pipe is leaking - If indeed there is a leak, repair is going to involve digging up the concrete (loads of mess & expense). Alternatively, replumb the CH with pipes dropping down from above - More expense, but if you move the radiators to internal walls (there is no need to have them under windows in a well insulated house), you should be able to reduce the amount of pipe needed. Would also be worth increasing the radiator sizes in anticipation of installing a heat pump at some point in the future.

ballamory

Jonnydeppiwish,

It's not both sides of the same wall. It's two different walls.  The top one is in the hallway,  at the end of wall separating kitchen from living room. The lower one is in the kitchen,  and is the wall separating the bathroom and kitchen.  There are further walls inside the pantry in the kitchen that have damp too (not pictured).   In total, it is about 5-6 m of wall, in various places.

ballamory

Another potentially useful nugget of information is that the damp proofing company admitted that damp problems were very rare in the village where the bungalow is situated, and that they had only once been called to the village in 30 years.   So maybe that does point more towards a leak?

ballamory

Hello all,

Thank you for all of the advice earlier in the thread 


I wanted to post an update on this, as the situation has developed further, and I would appreciate your thoughts .

After listening to the discussion on this forum, I decided to try and get a second opinion on what was causing the problem. The first opinion had come from a local damp proofing company   

I have a Homecare contract with British Gas for the property. So I asked them to come and check for leaks, since it was noticeable that the damage to the walls was all around the bathroom .

British Gas sent their plumbing arm, Dyno around, and they took a look, and pronounced that it definitely was 'rising damp', no leaks.

On that basis, I decided to go ahead and contract the local company to fix the plaster on the walls and install new damp course, on the assumption that it was indeed rising damp.

They put me on a waiting list, and did the job in late September.


On the day the completed the job, they phoned me, and told me they had found a leak in the bathroom, underneath the bath, that had been the real cause of the problem.  Because the leak hadn't been found, the water had been leaking for months, and had got under the laminate flooring not just in the bathroom, but had seeped into the hallway too, and caused it to start to rot. 

The walls and flooring were therefore all replaced. The total cost of repairs was over 2000 pounds.

I called back British Gas, and got them to come back and fix the leak immediately 

I also lodged a complaint that they hadn't found the leak when I had called them out to look for one, and had also diagnosed 'rising damp' like the local company.

British Gas and Dyno have been considering the complaint for several months now, but have come to the conclusion that that they are not liable, and have refused to pay any compensation. This is having consulted with their own insurance company.

Although they admit that they missed the leak, they argue that there was damage to the property before they were called in (hence the wall pictures shown on this thread) and effectively it is impossible to tell how much property damage was done before they came in and had a look, and how much afterwards, having missed the leak. On that basis, they argue that they will not pay for any of it. 

So, any experts on the forum, what do we think of their position?  Is it worth pursuing, for example, through the courts ?

alanyau88

For £2,000?  Forget it.  You'll spend much more than that on legal and court fees with a gamble as you may not win. 

Apologies but you should have listened to people telling you to lift the floorboards up and take a look like a surveyor does.  Rising Damp is not a myth but it is extremely rare to happen.

badger09

ballamory said:

Hello all,

Thank you for all of the advice earlier in the thread 


I wanted to post an update on this, as the situation has developed further, and I would appreciate your thoughts .

After listening to the discussion on this forum, I decided to try and get a second opinion on what was causing the problem. The first opinion had come from a local damp proofing company   

I have a Homecare contract with British Gas for the property. So I asked them to come and check for leaks, since it was noticeable that the damage to the walls was all around the bathroom .

British Gas sent their plumbing arm, Dyno around, and they took a look, and pronounced that it definitely was 'rising damp', no leaks.

On that basis, I decided to go ahead and contract the local company to fix the plaster on the walls and install new damp course, on the assumption that it was indeed rising damp.

They put me on a waiting list, and did the job in late September.


On the day the completed the job, they phoned me, and told me they had found a leak in the bathroom, underneath the bath, that had been the real cause of the problem.  Because the leak hadn't been found, the water had been leaking for months, and had got under the laminate flooring not just in the bathroom, but had seeped into the hallway too, and caused it to start to rot. 

The walls and flooring were therefore all replaced. The total cost of repairs was over 2000 pounds.

I called back British Gas, and got them to come back and fix the leak immediately 

I also lodged a complaint that they hadn't found the leak when I had called them out to look for one, and had also diagnosed 'rising damp' like the local company.

British Gas and Dyno have been considering the complaint for several months now, but have come to the conclusion that that they are not liable, and have refused to pay any compensation. This is having consulted with their own insurance company.

Although they admit that they missed the leak, they argue that there was damage to the property before they were called in (hence the wall pictures shown on this thread) and effectively it is impossible to tell how much property damage was done before they came in and had a look, and how much afterwards, having missed the leak. On that basis, they argue that they will not pay for any of it. 

So, any experts on the forum, what do we think of their position?  Is it worth pursuing, for example, through the courts ?

Thanks for coming back to update and glad you got it sorted. I didn’t realise how old this thread was but read it anyway as family member has just moved into a Victorian terrace and we’ve noticed damp on some internal walls. 

I’ll make sure he reads this thread!

alanyau88 said:

For £2,000?  Forget it.  You'll spend much more than that on legal and court fees with a gamble as you may not win. 

Apologies but you should have listened to people telling you to lift the floorboards up and take a look like a surveyor does.  Rising Damp is not a myth but it is extremely rare to happen.

Hmmm
OP has concrete floors. Not so easy lift up. 
Surveyors don’t lift floorboards.