I expect this is a two story building? Is this a picture of upstairs just under the roof? Or downstairs? If its downstairs what is in the room above? If its upstairs, it may be the chimney, the gutter, the roof or a leaking down pipe.
Damp rises 4 feet, that's 120cm above ground level. It is recomended that a dpc should be at least 6 inches, 15 cm above ground level. I think 9 inches and 19.5 cm is about right. Is any earth or anything else bridging your dpc? Salts are brought to the walls surface by water evaporation - injecting...
If you have wet rot, when you press your thumb nail against the wood, water will ouze out onto the surface and the wood will feel soft. Take a sharp pointed knife and drive it hard into the wood, with the width of the blade at right angle to the grain. Do this in various worrying places, then do it ...
Why not buy some more slates and rebuild the dpc? If the new plastic soil pipe is in line with the original dpc, just terminate the slates on either side, after all, the pipe itself is plastic.
Yes! In the days when John Prentis was Deputy Prime Minister, his department issued a directive saying, no cavity wall insulation should be fitted in homes in the west of the UK, or in any exposed location.
This looks like a classic case of rising damp. Walk round the house on the outside and see if there is a damp proof course. If there, it will be just level with the bottom of the front and back door frames. It may be a double row of Welsh slate, or a black line of bitumen, or it may be a chemical dp...
All wood is hygroscopic, it absorbes water vapour from the air. I note that all the floor boards are concave, indicating that they are colder and wetter underneath and drier on top. I suspect that the wood is also colder than the room in general. This is causing the water vapour in the room to conde...
1. Rising damp - rises to four feet above ground level. The outer covering of stones looks dry, but they appear to have bridged the damp proof course. If there is a damp proof course, it will be located just below the front door frame, check out the relative levels. You can always knock off the ston...
I would suggest that you start by looking for a damp proof course, is there one? Is there rising damp? Is the water coming through the wall as rain, or the roof or a leaking pipe? Is there a damp proof membrane under the concrete floor? Lay a rubber mat on the floor for a few days to see if water co...
The first thing to do is, to ascertain where the water is coming from. If the water is rising from the ground, soil outside, it will rise no more than four feet. If the water is rain coming through the wall, it will appear anywhere from roof to the top of the damp proof course. This usually happens ...
To understand the humidity in your basement, you need to know the humidity outside as well. When you measure humidity, the result is relative humidity, that is based on a mixture of the temperature at the time and the amount of water vapour in the air. For a given amount of water vapour in the air, ...
These are very large windows, as such, it is impossible to insulate them using any type of plastic, as it will bend and flop. Really the only way to do this, is to fit new glass windows inside the existing windows. In effect, make your own double glazing. Or have your existing windows removed and ha...
You need to install secondary glazing. The perfect distance is 12 inches from the inside of the existing piece of glass, but 4" and 8" inches will work almost as well. Just make sure the new glass is an airtight fit, otherwise you will have water vapour finding its way inside the gap and t...
The Building Research Establishment at Watford has done a lot of research into this, and the results have been very disappointing......external insulation, just doesn't work. As far as cavity wall insulation goes, the only insulation that works is blown in foam, this is waterproof as well as being a...
There are two problems with bathroom extractor fans. One, you loose a lot of heat through it 24/7, even if it has a shutter, shutters are normally useless. Your warm air rises and disappears through the shutter. Two, the fan blasts your expensive hot air into the sky, and at the same time it pulls f...
