Rising damp in solid wall. Anyone successfully sorted?

[0nTheEdge]

After waiting years for an interior wall to dry out after getting the chimney fixed, it would appear we have rising damp. The skirting boards are rotten and we have a timemark 2/3 metre high (discovered when we moved in but we assumed was chimney/roof issue). The wall is a solid (as in non cavity) as built before 1920 which I understand makes it much harder to deal with. Has anyone been through this and come out the other side with a proper solution?

the wall is quite wet from ground level. I can't see the DPC but it probably has one. You see the first two courses or brick above ground are scaly looking? That's dissolved lime or other minerals that are left behind on the surface of the brick when the water, that the minerals are dissolved in, evaporates. If you scrape a bit of the scale off and drop it in vinegar, it will probably fizz. Above the first two courses, the bricks look OK.

There may be a dpc between the scaly bricks and the clean ones. If you look closely you may see a black line or the slate embedded in the mortar. The lower bricks are unusually wet, so I still think there's a source of water.

Anyway, there's water visible in the bricks. Does the paving slope towards the house or away from the house? It looks loose, is there an area you can dig away next to the wall and see how wet it is? A garden trowel would do.

Do you have visible fireplaces, or ventilation holes into the chimneybreast? it's possible that a bodgy builder threw rubble down the chimney. That could become damp, and also block ventilation of the chimney. I can see from the quality of the pointing (that seems to have been done with a teaspoon) that some bad builders have been there.

Were you able to see the drains, gullies and manholes?

p.s.

have you ever found tomato plants growing wild round the house?

Beep Beep!

Looking at your photo of the airbrick behind the wrought-iron gate, I noticed some round spots, about fingertip size, in the bricks. Looking again at the other pics, I see more of them.

I think your wall has previously been drilled and given a "damp-proofing" treatment, and the spots are where the drill holes have been filled in with not-quite-matching mortar.

If this is the case, there will be a row of them all along the damp wall.

And it reinforces my belief that "damp-proofing" is useless because it doesn't repair the fault that is causing the excess water.

I really want to see the gullies or drainpipes that go into the ground now.

I may be mistaken but the cement pointing might not be helping matters either?

probably not, but in the pics it seems to be on the dry section of the wall, so not too urgent.

This is by the back door

Other side of the back door

At side of house near front door

Side of kitchen window

Bit embarrassing, but this is under the kitchen window.

Your walls are full of useless holes drilled by damp specialists. In some places they are going up the walls! What were they thinking?!

OK. Any or all of those are likely to be leaking, because the clay pipe in the ground usually snaps at the bend or the elbow. There might be an old house somewhere in the country that does not have broken and leaking gullies or drains, but I have never seen it.

Clues:

Where the mortar between the bricks has been washed away, or, as by your kitchen has been washed away and refilled.

Where the surrounding concrete surface has sunk and cracked, or moved away from the house wall, or been filled in

Where there is a damp patch around the pipe or drain

You can get a CCTV survey if you want, where they poke a camera up the drain and have a look.

You will get water from a broken drain, and it will be worse if the drain is blocked further downstream. Tree roots like to grow into broken drains.

Digging out and relaying drains is a simple job, but a bit wearisome as it involves gigging holes and trenches. It's a job for a builder or groundworker rather than a plumber (plumbers are weedy little fellows with petal-soft hands) but some advertise themselves as sanitary engineers and can use a shovel. A sturdy DIY woman who can dig trenches and follow instructions can do it. I think you will have to notify your local Building Control officer who will inspect the new drains before you cover them up.

My advise is not to waste your money on "damp-proofing" treatments.

Try and get a personal recommendation for a local small builder who's been in business for some years and not gone bust. As well as the drains, they can repair the brickwork where it has been loosened or eroded below ground.

Assuming that the cost of relaying the drains will be some thousands and you can't do it straight away, I would get a survey done and a report.

I don't believe it's worth trying to do piecemeal repairs. When you dig up a bit of clay pipe, you usually find the one it joins onto is also broken. When you dig out that one, you find....

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they've been broken and leaking, and slowly getting worse, for about 77 years.

If you want to sensibility check my opinion, dig a small pit next to the bathroom drain, and look in it immediately after you've had a bath and pulled the plug. I've stood in a hole and had it fill up with bathwater before now.

p.s.

I was serious about the wild tomato plants. This is a Bad Sign.

Thank you for your help piglet, I had a feeling it was more complicated than I was being told and I'm sick of spending money not fixing things. Can you see the wild tomato plants in the pictures? What do they look like? (Sorry if that's a thick question, I have grown actual tomato plants before). I appreciate the humour too, you gave me a much needed chuckle.
Thank you to everyone else who has taken the time to reply too, genuinely appreciate it

wild tomato plants look like ordinary ones, because they are directly descended from the ones you buy in the supermart or greengrocer.

Tomato seeds survive passing through the human digestive system and remain viable to germinate.

Ahh ok. Yuk. No wild plants thankfully!

I'm pretty sure I can see the slate DPC in the mortar bed in your photo

www.mumsnet.com/uploads/talk/201905/large-495165-img-20190514-155353180.jpg

It will be at the same height all the way round the house. In some cases it may be broken. If it is ever covered by paving or flowerbeds, the paving or ground must be dug out, and levelled two bricks below the dpc. I suspect there is rubble in the chimneybreasts bridging the dpc and allowing damp to rise. This is easily dug out, and if the chimneys are then ventilated top and bottom they will be able to dry.

That photo also shows bricks which are out of place, most likely because water damage over many years has eroded the lime mortar and allowed them to slip. This needs repair by a good bricklayer (not by whoever repointed the wall last time). Usually it's enough to hose out the mud and grit from the joints and repoint them, but your bricks have actually slipped so may need more skill to rectify. The mortar will also be eroded below the ground, so this is a job to do when the drains are being dug out and the wall will be exposed below ground level.

slightly off topic, but when/if you have the drains dug up, that would be an ideal time to run a new water supply pipe, in blue plastic, in a larger size, say, 32mm. As long as some burly builder does the digging, any plumber can install it for you, though the water co will inspect that it has been correctly laid, before the trench is filled in.

The cost of plastic pipe is quite low, and a large pipe will give you greatly improved water flow, for better showers that can be untroubled by someone turning other taps on and off, or fast-filling baths. It would enable you to get the best out of a big powerful combi, or to have an unvented hot-water cylinder, which gives unsurpassed performance. You wouldn't have to do any of those things yet, but having the new pipe in place would enable them later.

Added to which, 100-year-old water pipes are very likely to leak, whether they are lead or iron, and will usually small bore which constricts flow. It would be sad to renew the drains and then find you still had a leaky pipe.

If you have, or suspect, lead water pipes, ask your water company to test the drinking water for lead content. They might offer a lead replacement subsidy, or free connection.

a few 'snetters have run new pipe, and I think been very pleased with the result.