Chimney breast damp
Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 8:02 pm
Hi all
We have an early Victorian house, and despite out best efforts to fix damp problems around the chimney breast, we are constantly failing!!
After a week of heavy rain, our problem is back again. In four of our rooms (two upstairs, two downstairs which contain the chimney breast) there is a faint smell of wet plaster. The chimney is no longer in use, but has air vents in all of the four rooms.
Also, we have a cupboard upstairs which backs onto the chimney - the paint here has water running down the surface.
This is what we have done so far....
1) We have have had a new roof installed
2) The chimney stack has been repointed and about 3 years ago it was sprayed with a "waterproofing" spray to protect the bricks. I suspect we need another respray! The chimney is also capped (but vented)
3) Bitumen has been painted on the chimney exposed in the loft cavity. Also when our upstairs rooms were redecorated, the relevant walls were coated in bitumen before new plasterboard was added.
I've now run out of ideas! I'm hoping that there is a not too expensive solution out there, as this is one of many damp problems we are tackling at the moment.
Thanks in advance for any help.
We have an early Victorian house, and despite out best efforts to fix damp problems around the chimney breast, we are constantly failing!!
After a week of heavy rain, our problem is back again. In four of our rooms (two upstairs, two downstairs which contain the chimney breast) there is a faint smell of wet plaster. The chimney is no longer in use, but has air vents in all of the four rooms.
Also, we have a cupboard upstairs which backs onto the chimney - the paint here has water running down the surface.
This is what we have done so far....
1) We have have had a new roof installed
2) The chimney stack has been repointed and about 3 years ago it was sprayed with a "waterproofing" spray to protect the bricks. I suspect we need another respray! The chimney is also capped (but vented)
3) Bitumen has been painted on the chimney exposed in the loft cavity. Also when our upstairs rooms were redecorated, the relevant walls were coated in bitumen before new plasterboard was added.
I've now run out of ideas! I'm hoping that there is a not too expensive solution out there, as this is one of many damp problems we are tackling at the moment.
Thanks in advance for any help.