Help! Any damp detectives here?

[Zandathepanda]

Student flat. Ground floor. Old terrace house probably 1900-1920. Damp appeared after sleeping in room for one night so, with other problems with the house, Dd came back home.

Landlord says it’s condensation - she didn’t cook and there’s no shower nearby. However it had been raining a lot and was raining that day. He says open the window and don’t put furniture against the walls.
I am concerned it’s rising damp.
There are several walls that have similar patterns in the corner. But this is her bedroom wall, the other side is another ground floor flat.
Patches in corners in living room and other bedrooms.
Can anyone say from the photos?
I am concerned about her getting ill but also the water is round an electric socket she’ll need. She’s not that happy about having a ground floor window open (onto yard) at night.

Hi op, I had the exact same thing in my last flat. I lived on the ground floor and there were patches in the living room, downstairs hallway and kitchen. It was definitely rising damp and yours looks the same. I don't think it will make you ill but I could be wrong (maybe someone more knowledgeable will come along soon). I lived in mine for 6 years and never had any issues. I just had the windows open as much as I could but nothing ever really fixed it unfortunately.

Try not to worry too much.

Rising damp is not a thing. There is always a cause. Is there an issue with ground level? Leaking windows? Gutters or down pipes? Water pipes? We need more photos (externally) and a floor plan etc to be more helpful I’m afraid. But damp doesn’t just happen or rise from the ground, there’s always a cause. The LL should be fixing that.

Found one of outside (we are too far from property to go back). The window is fine but I think there’s salt marks up the wall.
There are old studs in the bricks so something has been done at one point. The photo was to ask to cut the wires!

The white areas on the external wall are salts from the bricks I think ? From damp in the wall. It does look worryingly wet around that socket.
There is a mumsnetter who is expert in such matters, I think PigletJohn ?

Oh sorry you did say salt marks ! I am half asleep today, I just looked at the picture.

Thanks SirVix - PigletJohn was the name I was trying to remember!
Calling PigletJohn!!!

Bump

@PigletJohn

You need to contact environmental health for the area the flat is in unless it's a property rented through university when you should contact their lettings department
It's not up to you to sort out the dampness they will assess if its safe and contact landlord and can enforce works

it's not condensation, unless she stands a wet clothes horse against the wall.

the water marks are hill-shaped, so probably water leaks.

May be from pipes but as there are several it could be water spilling from a gutter or ledge outside

Is this on the ground floor?

If you can get some pics standing back and showing the whole wall, from roof to ground, including the gutters, downpipes, soilpipes, bay window roofs, windows, drains and the ground or paving at the foot of the wall, it may show something significant.

Note that wet patches disappearing and reappearing may be rain related, unless somebody only uses the bathroom twice a week,

I see from the outside pic that somebody has tried to cure the appearance of the damp with silicone injections. As usual, it has been totally useless. The concrete against the wall is wet and mossy so most likely either there is rain falling on it (e.g. gutter fault) or a plumbing or drain leak.

If the bedroom floor is concrete, water can soak into it and then into the walls. Usually from a leak. Wooden floors, with a ventilated airgap beneath, don't do that.

Concrete against a house wall very often raises the level above the original DPC, which allows water to climb up the plaster or render (clean bare brickwork is very resistant to damp). If it slopes towards the house, water will run onto the wall.

As the wet against the wall is obious to the eye, and the wall has previously been injected with silicone, don't believe any nonsense the landlord tries to give about "never happened before" "had no way of knowing" "it must be your daughter's excessively damp lifestyle."

and the concrete window sill looks wet inclining me towards gutter spillage.

might be completely wrong of course.

Ahh thanks Giantkitten for alerting PigletJohn and others

She hasn’t returned to the ground floor flat yet. Her flatmate who is closer to the university entered today. One of the windows was ajar and a dehumidifier in her room, collecting water so the landlord has had workmen in to fix some other broken things. The landlord said the walls in older properties need to breathe and require ventilation, which he says means keeping the windows ‘on the second security setting’. This is a bit concerning as he may be doing this whilst they aren’t there (the other girls have left a tv etc before leaving). Also this is not great in winter or at night. He says he has ventilated the property over several days (he omits to mention the dehumidifier) and the walls are fine (to be fair her flatmate says they were). He says it is condensation and we are confused over rising damp.
She has only slept in the room once before abandoning it. Everything felt damp. However the mattresses had been (I think) steam cleaned on one side as the other side was grim. The attached picture is the best we’ve got of the back of the house. The red arrow is her bedroom of the ground floor flat.

5EADEF59-E262-4DD8-95A5-979C9862B547.jpeg
5EADEF59-E262-4DD8-95A5-979C9862B547.jpeg

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Ignore the bottom of the message! No idea what happened there.

is that a pipe above and to the right of the window? Or a little roof like a porch?

I don't see any particular water marks from the gutter. But I can't see that it has a downpipe. I wonder where the water goes.

the gutter to our left of the chimneystack looks odd. There seems to be a little black mark near the end, and a similar mark to the right of the top of the upstairs window above your daughters. Might be a supporting bracket but looks very large.

the chimneys indicate that there would once have been a fireplace or a range in your daughter's room. Is there any sign that the damp patches are associated with it?

Found another photo - there is a drain cover with a run of concrete that goes towards the room.
The flat was fine and photos fine when they visited it in the summer (they took lots). Previous Tenants said everything fine.

Here you go

No porch

The start of the tenancy was 2 weeks ago and they have been paying since. But not been living there because of different issues they went back home. The landlord is cross they have asked him about damp and is now asking whether they want to continue with the tenancy!! The letting agent said it only dealt with the landlord to advertise the property.
Poor Dd - she had been round loads of properties and so many had damp bits she could see so she ‘binned’ them from a very limited list of what was available.

mmm, lots of lush green weeds growing out of that wet crevice.

the mahole cover and trench suggest a drain runs under the bedroom floor. Odd. Perhaps it was once a kitchen.

It's very noticable that the cover and trench run directly towards the wet wall.

Let's suppose it is a room that contains a drain. There will presumably also be plumbing pipes feeding the sink, bath, WC or whatever the drain is connected to.

If it was once a kitchen, there will probably originally have been a yard gulley, with the kitchen sink waste coming through a hole in the wall. Old yard gulleys are almost invariably broken and leaking. The concreting work we see might have been to remove the old pipework; or maybe there is something still connected to it, e.g. an extra bathroom put in when the house was divided into flats. Which would mean water still running under the floor when the flat is occupied.

So another possible source of damp if, as usual, there is a leak.

Does your daughter remember if the bedroom floor was concrete or wood? Laminate or engineered flooring may look like wood, but it feels different underfoot if it is laid on concrete.

on a dry day, it would be interesting to fill the bath, then pull out the plug (or run sink, shower, flush WC) then run outside and see if damp appears in that crevice between wall and concrete.

was any of the vegetation wild tomato plants?

Morning! Thank you. I have just realised the consequences of the tomato comment!
Not sure how to play this but at least I have the information. Just feel sorry for the students.

As I said it's not your or your daughter's responsibility to find a solution.
If it's to do with the building which it appears to be then it's the landlord who has to repair what is causing the damp,contact the local council there should be someone who deals with standards in HMO properties that is houses in multiple occupation or if it's actually through the university accommodation office they should have someone dealing with disrepair situations.
The council can make the landlord do work or in some cases condemn the room until things are sorted so your daughter is released from her contract.