Shower leak repairing patch of stramit wall

Tiggy777

Hi all

Hope someone can please help / advise me on my shower problem.

I stopped using my shower some months ago as I noticed water / damp was coming through to the room below.  Having taken off the tiles I can see that certainly I did have a leak.

My first question is about asbestos.  The House was built by Bryant homes in 1984 and I think the wall is compressed straw (I have attached some pictures) think its call Stramit.

The big question as a novice DIYer how best to repair this section of wall.  Once done I was going to install backer boards to water proof but not exactly sure how to ‘prepare’ the wall for the backer board.  Is it possible to apply something to harden it up, should I install paster board first and then fit the backer board to that, or fix the backer board direct to the wall as it is.

Would appreciate any help you can give and thanks you very much for your time.

Tiggy

Anotherjob2024

I have just joined as I saw your problem with leak in stramit wall.  Exactly the same as me.  Did you get any decent answers?  We are just digging out all the wet and smelly straw.  It certainly smells.

ashe

All our internal walls are made of this upstairs, dreading having to deal with it some day, issue is it goes right into the loft as they're sort of dropped in from above, that and it'd generally much thinner than a stud wall. 

Any time we had sockets put in or anything it was wild how much mess it made taking that stuff out 

FreeBear

ashe said:

All our internal walls are made of this upstairs, dreading having to deal with it some day, issue is it goes right into the loft as they're sort of dropped in from above, that and it'd generally much thinner than a stud wall.

You can get a plasterboard partitioning system with a cardboard honeycomb core at ~50mm thick. It is pretty rigid stuff, although a little expensive. One such example - https://workplaceinteriorshop.co.uk/product/honeycomb-panel-50mm-aluminium-framed-composite-partitions/Worth bearing in mind should you ever need to replace the Stramit boards.