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Sorry for the boring thread but hoping someone might know about such things...
A local company did the DPC in the back wall back in '96, long before we bought the house. It cost £110 for the treatment and the plastering.
We knew the wall was damp when we bought the house - the survey picked up on it and you could see and smell it too, so the DPC was obviously failing. The damp got much worse after we had the wall re-plastered and some of the bricks they'd drilled into externally had collapsed so we had them replaced a few years ago (we knew this would bork the guarantee but hoped it might help a bit - it didn't).
Just had a quote from the same company and to have the same work done again is going to cost us £720 before VAT! Does that sound reasonable or is it worth getting a few more quotes?
id be looking for a burst drain or something else i think your kidding your self with the DPC ....
Pretty sure it's nothing but rising damp in a 100 year old terraced house... Anyone had one put in recently?
id be looking for a burst drain
How? (serious question)
Have I read that right - the DPC was failing before you did anything, and you're looking at getting the same company back to redo it?
I'd be looking for quotes and preferably good recommendations from neighbours/colleagues etc.
im just sceptical that its failed in 16 years .... do you think that people have been replacing the DPC every 15 years for the last 100 years ? or is it built in a swamp ?
it doesnt hurt to look at causes before looking at solutions.
Pretty sure it's nothing but rising damp in a 100 year old terraced house... Anyone had one put in recently?
Whilst I'm no expert, I believe that rising damp is practically a myth, and that the damp problem in a 100 year old terrace is more likely to be caused by hermetically sealing a building designed to be porous and ventilated. The house can't 'breathe' so all the moisture caused by showers and sweaty bodies can't get out.
Injected DPC's are snake oil of the highest order.
Do you have any of the following on the damp wall:
1. leaking gutters?
2. leaking raditors/pipes
3. Broken tiles on the roof leaking water into wall.
4. blocked/broken drains
5. A concrete path right upto the side of the house.
6. Sand and cement render on that wall
7. Climbing plants against that wall
8. Blocked or removed vent bricks.
Basically you need to fix the source of the damp problem, injecting a DPM won't work.
edit: What5 cougar said. I am current renovating a house that the previous owners decided to use modern techniques to remove the damp, and all that has happened is that over the last 20 years, every single joist end and lintel has rotted, and the house nearly collapsed in on itself, mainly due to leaking plastic gutters, sand and cement render and injected DPMs.
"Basically you need to fix the source of the damp problem, injecting a DPM won't work"
this is exactly what i was getting at ! - just a bit more blunt ...
I would tend to agree with richc, I worked in the Preservation industry for 5 years the minute you bridge the DPC with decoration, render or local repairs your Guarantee is void. I went on a seminar once where the chemicals company selling the product boasted they had never once had to honour their warranty because there was so many get outs. I would look at all of the above and when maybe consider a tanking system something like this. Hope this helps.
http://www.permagard.co.uk/newton-membranes
Lots of good stuff, thanks very much. There are a couple of possible causes; there is indeed an old pavement running right by the door, the neighbours both have down pipes from the gutter which empties straight onto the pavement (we don't have a down pipe), the floor is slightly lower than the outside - you step down to come into the house.
We don't dry clothes on the radiators, there are always at least a couple of windows open, the patio doors in the affected wall are open a lot for the dog coming and going (all day in the Summer), so probably not a problem with ventilation...
Looks like this;
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"there is indeed an old pavement running right by the door, the neighbours both have down pipes from the gutter which empties straight onto the pavement (we don't have a down pipe), the floor is slightly lower than the outside - you step down to come into the house."
and you have your issue ! fix that before you do ANYTHING else ....
Just to add as well, regardless of if you get a DPC injected or not, you need to find the source of damp, especially if you have concrete render, as the bricks will start to crumble and the lime mortar will break down, and then you will have major problems.
Just saw your last post, you need to fix those drains. Also its not going to help that your room is lower than the pavement.
The concrete pavement is on a slope away from the house - wouldn't any water just run off into the lawn beyond? Strangely, the neighbour on our right has REALLY bad problems - their radiator fell off their wall! But the neighbour on the right has none whatsoever (and his wall is rendered).
Just had a look out the back - one down pipe is perhaps three metres from the start of our wall, the other is a good five metres away - they're both in my neighbour's back gardens so not much I can do about that...
and you have your issue ! fix that before you do ANYTHING else ....
Just saw your last post, you need to fix those drains
Not sure how TBH. I suppose I could ask the neighbours if they'd mind me blocking off their downpipes and refitting the guttering so the downpipe was on my property, and then having the rain run off into a water butt or something? At a bit of a loss here really 🙁
Do the gardens get waterlogged? As the water has to go somewhere. Also the concrete path up against the side of the house isn't ideal.
As Cougar said old houses were designed not to be water and air tight, so they let the moisture out through the wall. So you need to find something to fix the water near the wall (french drain would be ideal), the concrete path (gravel would be better) and the gypsum plaster. There isn't much you can do about the ground level, you ideally you want to be higher than outside.
When its raining, I would have a good look around outside and in (especially in the roof) and see if you can spot any leaks or overflowing gutters, and work out where the water from the drains is going.
Not sure how TBH. I suppose I could ask the neighbours if they'd mind me blocking off their downpipes and refitting the guttering so the downpipe was on my property, and then having the rain run off into a water butt or something? At a bit of a loss here really
Would it be possible to lift the path and install dig a trench and backfill it will gravel and shingle to make a french drain?
Not cheap but would more than likely help.
simply sticking a 90 degree bend on the bottom facing away from the wall would make a difference ....
Damp proofing is pointless unless you know what is causing the damp in the first place. Damp proof 'specialists' will only tell you what you don't want to hear to line their pockets.
Don't be surprised when you invite a 'specialist' in that he recommends the most expensive thing on his van to solve your problem as they know you don't know rising damp doesn't really exist! though now you do!
Cheers for the advice guys. richc - no the gardens don't get waterlogged. Both of our neighbours and ourselves have a patio laid out over the old pavement, so the water has to travel a good three metres before it gets to the lawn - I guess some of the water goes between the cracks of the patio paving before it gets to the lawn...
I reckon you're right about digging a trench (and possibly also having smaller gravel-filled trenches running away from it at right angles into the garden?). It would be quite a job - the concrete pavement looks very substantial and the patio would have to go, but would almost certainly be worth the effort.
My only slight concern would be that if the neighbours didn't do the same thing, all the run-off from their properties might just fill up my newly dig, gravel-filled trench and overwhelm it, exacerbating the problem...
is your neighbour without the problem uphill or down hill of you ?
might be worth the three of you getting together and looking at it like neighbours - i realise one has no issues on his property but i know if it was my house causing issues with my neighbours id like to help resolve it.
possibly cheaper/quicker/less disruption if you can get a man with a mini digger in to do the trenching and filling. diggings hard work ..... talking as a man who hand dug a very big long deep trench with 3 other guys for 8 weeks over summer for a very rich man who refused allow a digger over his grass !
ask around for a good jobbing builder he will take a look and advise - infact some photos of the area in question outside and the current drain situation would actually help.
if you are around the Bristol area, I might be able to recommend some people (once they have finished at my house!)
Absolutely no point in digging trenches if the ground isn't free draining. If its anything like a clay material it just won't drain away! Digging trenches to a soak away of sorts may help but even for this amount of run off you're honna need a sizeable hole in the ground.
We had a not dissimilar issue with the dining room a few months ago - The builder ( a no nonsense type guy as opposed to a smooth talking BS artist) spent ages diagnosing the issue. He pointed out various potential contributory factors.
He recommended a drain/trench type arrangement channelling in the concrete at the side of the house to divert water flow off the drive directly to the drain so as to avoid water hitting the wall of the house.
This was in conjunction with three strategically placed airbricks & treatmant of the ends of the underfloor timbers that water had seeped into. (I got the distinct impression he wasn't a fan of totally sealed houses whatever their age).
In our case, it cost somewhere between £400 & £500 and took two guys a full day to do the channeling, brickwork & timber treatment.
The end result is a nice dry room with no damp smells 🙂 Took about three weeks for the smell of the chemicals and any residual dampness to die down after the building work.
( money well spent in my humble opinion)
Chris
trail rat - it's pissing down right now, but will definitely get some photos up tomorrow. And on advice from richc I've been out looking to see what the water's doing. It struck me that there's an upstairs double-glazed window whose frame was very badly bodged into place using expanding foam by yours truly when we first moved in - it had to be done as birds were nesting in the huge holes round the unit!! Could be water getting in there...
Had my head in the roofspace (very tight) and can't see any water / dampness anywhere. The guttering is all working beautifully so far as I can see outside, the neighbours downpipes are emptying onto their patios (trailrat - they are at 90 degrees I notice).
richc - I'm near Durham sadly, Wrightyson, the soil's not clay and seems to drain pretty well - I only know this as it's me that ends up digging the veg patch over! trail rat - I know for a fact the neighbours are stoney broke - the ones with the very bad damp are basically living in a building site which has stayed the same since we moved in... The ones on the other side don't care as it's not their problem. SnS - that sounds like reasonable money for all that work - will just have to find a friendly, honest, hard-working builder...