Damp - help I’ve had 5 different tradespeople tell me 5 different things

[purpletrees16]

I bought a house with damp in the bay window and some suspiciously next to a drain on the side wall and some in a porch. Driveway slopes away but is too high & covers air brick. 1930s

Just had a range of tradespeople (from damp specialists to drainage people) have a look at it and every single one has come away with a different plan. Costs vary but it’s the sort of job where is seems they are going to escalate due to set out exclusions in the quote document but the starting point is £750 to £1500. It’s not so much about the money but about not Messing up the house with chemical injections or bad damp solutions that will be ongoing. House needs decorated etc. but we’re looking to create a safe & warm family home rather than something that looks like in a magazine finish wise so it suits us and we got a great area/space for the price.

I’ve been told not to do chemical injections
To do chemical injections
Not to do french drain as no where for water to go
To do ftench drain as arco drain won’t work with left/right camber and french drain will drain under driveway as there is a camber away from house.
To remove all my skirting immediately
To let my skirting dry out and then replaster & replace damaged in bay and leave the wood.
To flat render the whole bottom front outside (currently painted bricks going to pebble dash.)
To do arco but have a second channel to make the water flow in the right direction.
That the two metal down pipes need immediate replacing
That they are fine and if I do the bathroom extension in a few years I should do then.

Everyone will fix our misaligned drain. Only one company also does guttering cleaning. There’s a crack in the mortar at the side that seems to sit out with everyone’s quotes at the moment.

Trade 1: £750

• clean guttering and sure up leak at end cap
• dig out square around air brick using slope to get water away.
• seal up edge of driveway and wall with triangle of cement (?)
• come back in two months after it’s dried out and re plaster in front room.

Trade 2: £1350
-arco drain along front

• seal up edge around with plastic triangle.

Trade 3: ??
-arco drain but also a drainage channel as this guy took more measurements and thinks that it will have to left rather than right and therefore need a second run off channel to get the water away

Trade 3: ??
French drain
Arco drain on straight bit
Fix mortar by making crack bigger & filling in

Trade 4: £1500
Reseal the front with smooth render 1.2m & Waterproof it
Damp injections
Remove all skirting along hall (original and screwed in apparently - going to be hard to replicate.)
Replaster bay (lots of provisions in this pit)

Any advice would be well received!!!

Tempted to do small to start with and see if that dries it out and then next year can do more. We’ve got money to sink into the house but no rush for everything to be completed -just safe for dog & 2 years till kid.

Have a good chat with this guy

www.simonjameslewis.com

From what you've said getting the drain aligned will take out a lot of the issue, and then you can go from there, if there is no rush that is an advantage. It's good to take your time cos if you do it all at once you won't know which of the interventions was the one that really mattered and thus what the real cause was.

Chemical injections tackle the symptom not the cause so I would not go with whoever said that.

Anything that is tackling symptoms not causes is a red herring. So don't take the skirtings off - that might help it dry out form the inside but it doesn't stop the wet coming in the first place.
Blocked air brick in 1930's house would be encouraging damp as airing under the floor was the drying method inbuilt into construction at that time. So clearing that is good idea.
Bricks can't dry out beneath render so a stripe of render would have to have an incredibly good seal with the brick to not just end up being a dampness trap... and if it started like that it wouldn't stay well sealed for years so you're adding a maintenance issue.

I think fix the drain and open the air brick and then sit back and see what happens. It will take a while to dry but you could encourage that from inside with dehumidifier / heating and airing...

repointing cracked mortar is a good thing as water could get in that - could do that yourself if you're handy

I love a good damp question.

Thanks! Yes i am leaning towards no chemical injections. We’re not going to moving for years so it is really about getting a house that works for our family that hasn’t got ongoing issues.

We have a dehumidifier as we moved from a very warm flat and it’s also a portable a/c and we are currently heating & airing the house as much as we can.

Water will find the tiniest of gaps and will always fall downwards and use path of least resistance... from those first principles you can usually work out causes. If water is directed away from the house that is number 1. So things that do that are the first to check. Roof tiles, guttering etc. if water is likely to be present as an inherent feature of the building (old single skin brick built for example), it needs to have a way to escape so waterproof skins / chemical injections etc can all make it worse. That was why i suggested the guy in my link, because your house is 1930's build he understands that type of build really well and is very solution focused not quick/expensive fix focused and has no profit to make from one type of advice or another.

Ah cool - appears to be Bristol based though? Which is a bit of a mission to London - not sure what he would do remotely. Cool idea & I love a cic. Will drop an email.

He can do zoom consult. Though whether you/he think it would be suitable is up to you. He has helped me and I'm near Kendal.

He has travelled for consults previously but probably not allowed at the moment.

Still worth a chat though.

The link to that Simon james website brings up a really annoying amazon prizewinner type advert that it's hard to get rid of

In a 1930s house some condensation in a bay is probably to be expected. I would expect to emulsion that wall more often. If you were budgeting for expensive wall paper I would say not there, and don’t put furniture flush against the bay. But a damp bay doesn’t sound something you should be spending £s on...

Just Googling him works OK though. Thanks for the recommendation.

@Oversize

The link to that Simon james website brings up a really annoying amazon prizewinner type advert that it's hard to get rid of

Really, oh dear, it doesn't do that for me. 🤷

@Oversize

Just Googling him works OK though. Thanks for the recommendation.

Oh good. 🙂

Does the pattern of damp in the wall not give a clue as to whether it is coming from below or above?

I'm assuming the bay is single thickness brick?

My instinct would be do drain, guttering and expose to below the air brick and then wait some time to see what happens. I don't see why you need to tear off your nice old skirting.

It’s coming from below. In the bay the plaster has crumbled at the bottom - there’s no obvious smell or anything but nothing has been decorated or repaired in 10 -20 years. (For example, we spent a lot of the first day tightening the doors, reattaching drawer handles and fixing hinges so that everything was a little easier to use and we had to get a plumber to fix the shower valve (stuck on one temperature) and bleed some completely unopenable radiators.)

Have a look at this website as well - www.heritage-house.org. It comprehensively explains why chemical injections don't work and that in a lot of cases the problem with older houses is that they can't breathe (eg if there is cement render on the outside). Leaking drains or gutters should also be checked. May or may not apply to your situation but contains lots of information.

Those websites are referring to historic buildings, with long since disused materials (which incidentally can still be made more energy efficient). 1930s is not historic.

Chemical injections are a waste of money.

I would have got a surveyor to look at it. Not unqualified trades. The air brick must be exposed and cleaned up. What about damp proof course? Has it got one? Is it single brick thickness? Rebuild it if it is. To modern standards.

Damp is a problem. You cannot just leave it. Water is getting into the wall. A decent surveyor would get to the bottom of it. It’s important to stop the water rising from the ground and attacking the building. Where does the water from the guttering go? Is run off from the house saturating the area around the window? It needs far more investigation.

I would say find a surveyor that specialises in damp.

I sold my mothers house recently and the buyers surveyor highlighted damp in the bay window and told them to seek advice. They did this in the form of 3 quotes from various contractors. They then tried to get us to reduce the asking price to cover the cost.
Unfortunately for them we had already paid for a damp survey and the surveyor told us what was causing the damp and exactly how to fix it.

It was caused by rain water splashing down from the guttering, landing on the concrete paving slabs, bouncing up and hitting the bay wall above the damp course.
Solution was to divert the rain water by fixing the guttering. We also removed the concrete slabs in front of the bay window and replaced them with gravel. Sorted for less than £100

Beware of any damp proof specialists or contractors. They are quoting for work. Better to pay for a surveyor to tell you the real story of what is happening. They have nothing to gain - you have already paid them.

Agree with @BiscuitLess's recommendation of Pete Ward at Heritage House. Not affiliated with him, just find him to be extremely knowledgeable and he helped me dodge a bullet with a house I was going to buy.

Disagree with @Summerhillsquare in that any house built before 1945 is classified as a period property.

Houses built before 1945 were built to be 'breathable' using lime mortar and lime plaster to allow moisture to escape.

After the war, building techniques changed and the use of cement, gypsum and plastic based paints were used to stop moisture from getting in.

Using these materials on a period property traps moisture and causes damp issues.

Heritage House website has lots of free information on this and what to do about it.

post some photos please. The whole wall, from roof to ground.

include pics of damp patches, drains, airbricks and gutters. The water is probably coming from them.

As everyone else has said, chemical injections will not repair whatever fault is providing the water.

A 1930's house would have been built with a DPC, probably slate. Slate lasts at least 500 million years. So something else has gone wrong, and can be repaired.

p.s.

in some cases bitumen was used as a DPC. I'm sorry to say that the life may not be as long as slate, we've only found it being used in 6,000 year old tombs.