DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi
I'm trying to get the bottom 3 inches of a party plastered wall in the kitchen back to the bare brick as brick appear to be very damp - a dpc has been previously applied however at the time, the wall was fully plastered down to the floor with no gap. - this was done about 15 years ago. In the meantime, the kitchen was flooded about a year ago so not sure if the brick is damp due to flood or because of plastering to ground level.
Anyway, plaster is very hard to get off - any recommendations on any tools or applications to help and any other advice re re damp proofing? Might the lower bricks do with a silicon injection to dry out??
many thanks
C

[b]BOLSTER / CHISEL POWER TOOL HIRE[/b]
You can get a tool called a "bolster chisel", not sure if this is a real name or nickname, however you can hire them for small duty or heavy duty, usually about £15/day max.

For plaster you need a light duty tool. When you hire them they come with a few end effectors, chisel, pin, etc to allow you to do different types of work.

Basically they are an automatic chisel. Pull the trigger and watch the baby rip into almost anything.

Heavy Duty Bolster's are great for foundation slabs - if you ever fancy a go at cracking one of those.

[b]DAMP / DRY OUT[/b]
You must determine the source of moisture ingress, is it rising, is it due to one off flood, or storm penetration?

I had the same problem, plaster blowing, skirtings blowing, etc, but we paid for a survey, he was very good, and in fact surprised us completely with the result as we were concerned about rising damp and all the injection solutions. He told us irrefutably that our problems were based upon poor maintenace of Rain Water Goods, (e.g. Guttering, Downpipes and Run-offs), and that poor Render and Paint over the years had left us with a non-breathing impermiable skin on our building, causing it to retain moisture. They test for Rising damp and the test was negative.

Anyway, bottom line is walls do dry-out, use a de-humidifier if you need to, hire one of these for approx £25/week if you shop around

(or checkout screwfix:http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=1228&id=61071&p=http://www.screwfix.com/search.do;jsessionid=KM40MG31TZVAKCSTHZPCFFA?_dyncharset=UTF-8&fh_search=dehumidifier)

Or at least ventilate heavily, windows doors open, and leave heating on max, this will pull moisture out of the wall. We were lucky and have an aircon unit with a dehumidifier setting, leaving it on worked a treat.

With regard to plaster sucking up moisture, if this is the only moisture, then I reckon your problem is minor, usually wet plaster will bubble and salts will come out through the paint, but simply rub-it down and once the bubbling seems to have stopped re-decorate.

S.