Neighbour's downpipe and guttering cause our damp?

[veneeroftheweek]

I have posted before about a strange wet patch on our internal wall at floor level at the side of our fireplace. It's also in patches along the wall in between the fireplace and front of the house. We live in a terrace and have been scratching our heads about where it's coming from and have done all the usual things such as checking our guttering, looking for pipes that could be leaking, lifting floorboards, digging a French drain etc. Anyway, I realised the other day that the house immediately next door to us has a damaged down pipe which has now become completely dislodged and that this could be the source of our damp. We live in the white house in the picture and the damp is in the party wall between the two. Could this feasibly be the source? The tenants next door claimed to have no problem with damp in their place but I haven't been able to look and their landlord is really slack.

It's been partially fixed it since I took the picture but it's still not properly connected at gutter level. Is it possible the the water is soaking in so much that it's spread to the inside of our house? I'm not sure how much fuss I can realistically make with the landlord.

It's certainly possible, especially if your house is downhill of next door. The pointing behind the downpipe needs re-done as all the mortar is missing. The fact that the wall is green shows it is permanently damp there.

Also, is the damp proof course covered by that render?

Yes we are slightly downhill of the house. The render on ours does go right down the the ground, yes.

The more I look at the picture the more I realise that this likely to be the source of the problem. I feel a bit silly now, as it's so obviously I'm a terrible state.

Do you have a downpipe too, or is this shared? It looks like it goes to your place at the bottom

It's probably a combination of both tbh.

We have our own downpipe with a shared drain on our property. Their downpipe feeds into this. I had the drain checked out and it doesn't appear to have a leak.

So do you think our damp proof course is compromised by the render Wowfudge? Interesting. The builder I had round didn't seem to think it was a problem as lots of houses round here are rendered or pebble dashed to the ground. What should the ground level part look like?

It should have a metal rail (to stop the plaster dropping) about 2-3 inches from the ground. The moisture is essentially being sucked up.

You should probably contact your insurers. Take lots of photos.

Thanks. I'll investigate that. There is a lip about 30cm above the ground but I'm not exactly what's below that how it's been done as the house had been rendered a long time. I do know that Victorian houses had damp proof courses made of slate which often fail over time, so we'll look at that too.

I even had a surveyor round who didn't identify this as a problem. Frustrating!