Rain coming through brickwork, what to do?

[VisaWoes]

It’s definitely rain rather than damp. Appeared on Friday when weather was terrible on the inside of our upstairs bedroom. Three small wet patches. The wind was driving the rain against that side of the house. It’s an old Victorian house. It’s away from the window and mid height so i don’t think connected to the roof. No dripping gutter that I can see and not near a downpipe.

do we just hope it doesn’t happen again or do the bricks need looking at?

We had this problem in a coastal house. Every year we would paint 36286 Thompsons Water Seal 5 Litre (TWSEAL5L), Clear This stuff onto external walls. Our neighbours would either do this or have already had the walls rendered.

Perfect, thank you. I will send dh up a ladder with some 😁

Have you checked the pointing outside around that area? If some of its crumbled or dislodged that could be letting rain in. I'm guessing if its Victorian theres no cavity wall and it will be a single skin so if the pointings gone it will show on the plaster inside.

No, but will get dh to check that as well! Good idea.

Sounds like it needs repointing

I was coming on this thread to say the same thing. I tried everything with a chimney once, new leading, new pointing, new pot, new cap all stuck on with new mortar and it still leaked. So it was Thompson water sealed and it worked.
Do make sure the bricks are dry before you paint them and do check the pointing is ok.

I had this following pointing being done with the wrong stuff. Victorian terrace here, repointing fixed it and had no problems since.

I would also say the pointing. The last house we lived in needed the paint pp mentioned on the inside. That would keep it dry for a few weeks.

After a decade we are in somewhere much smaller but has been done properly and I'm on cloud nine!

We had a similar issue recently and it was to do with gutters blocked with moss. Hard to describe but the gutter was at a right angle to a slanting roof and it was getting pushed under the tiles.

The second week we were in our house it rained heavily and started raining down the walls inside as well. We'd known from the survey it needed repointing but the reality of rain indoors wasn't fun! Repointing needed scaffolding and was a bit noisy but definitely worth the investment.

We struggled with damp in our victorian terrace. 3 separate roofers said the roof was in great shape. So were the gutters. So was the render. So was the damp proof course.
One day in extremely heavy rain, it rained inside! Literally rain poured down the inside walls.
We got out more of a structural engineer to take a look and he confirmed that the roof tiles were good, but the membrane that they sit on had perished. So the roof needed to be stripped off, new membrane laying, and the tiles putting back on.

Repointing.

Be wary of painting things on to brickwork without treating the actual cause as you can trap the damp / water in the bricks and this will cause you more issues long term.