Wet walls - HELP All manner of questions and solutions to problems and issues surrounding the subject of brickwork, blockwork and stonework

[foggy70]

Hi

I am new and this is my first posting and I have a crisis!!

In my kitchen I removed a massive handbuilt cupboard that was housing my boiler (going to build a smaller housing for it), after I had removed I noticed the wall was a bit crappy so I gave it a skim, all looked great. Then last friday came and there was torrential rain and suddenly I have a large (about a foot across) wet patch on the inside of the wall!!!!

I am on the first floor, so I had a look out of the window along the outside of the wall and noticed bit concrete/cement circles. It looks like whoever fitted the boiler had a few attempts at making holes for the vents and when it went wrong they just filled them with concrete/cement!!!

Any ideas what I should do?? Should I try and knocked through build the wall back up??

It is quite worrying!! Thanks to anyone that helps

Steve

[welsh brickie]

you cant fix the problem by doing it from inside you need to get a ladder and repair it from the outside.
get a quote it wont be that much it sounds like only a couple of hours work

[foggy70]

Thanks Brickie, what do you think needs doing?

Will this concrete/cement mix need to be dug out from the outside and rebricked??

[tonyjeffs]

I had a comparable problem. The huge gable wall of my daughter's end terrace house had damp patches on the inside. It had been pointed a few years ago by a previous owner, but there must've been gaps or imperfections although they weren't obvious.

Ideally, the answer would be to rake out and repoint the entire wall.
And if that didn't work to paint it,but I thought that was too much effort. So I filled the few small holes I found (behind the street sign) with mortar, and then painted the whole wall with damp proofing solution from B&Q. No neatness or accuracy required in the painting just so long as the whole wall is covered.
And like a miracle all the damp on the inside dried up. It's been good for two years. I'll do it again soon in case it wears off, but it was a very quick easy effective job.

So get some brickwork damp-proofing solution and slop it on!

Tony

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