Owning your own home

Been waiting in front of the new place with removal men being paid by the hour for an hour and a half whilst funds transfer. This is such a bad design.

Completed yay!

Awesome news. Congrats to you both...!

Woohoo! Nice one!

Congrats @Kat_Balou @OneLessCardigan

Cheers Tim, Iain, Rich. So so happy :-D

Iain if that silver shelves thing isn't obvious let me know, but you're a smart cookie.

Aaaaaand we already have rising damp coming through the living room wall behind the sofa, which is now mouldy.

It's just one patch near the entrance but its pretty bad. Good times.

Oh, and we have it in the bathroom next to the loo.

Can anyone (London based) recommend a surveyor?

You probably don't. Show us some pictures and tell us where the walls are - inside/outside, NSEW.

No hot water or heating. Pressure is low in the system and I've had to bleed the radiators so it's now pretty much zero. We can't access the refill loop for our combi boiler to repressurise the system so have to call out someone. Annoying.

Will post pics later... It's at the front, east facing. It's a bit of an odd place because the entrance is covered (Warner flat) but it looks as if its coming in from the door frame of the front door.

Bruce Spenser MSc MCIOB
Building Surveyor & Chartered Builder
http://www.buildingsurveyor.london
London - 020 8806 2400
Orkney - 01856 851957
Mobile - 07927 123469
bruce@buildingsurveyor.london

Recommended to me by @mands and did a really thorough job.

Area highlighted green is where the damp is. It's about a meter high at the front, tapering down to a point.

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Leak from upstairs: it didn't get any worse and is drying out. They're coming round today to see for themselves so having to WFH as mrs_com has appointments. There's just a slightly darker patch where it was wet. If this doesn't go I probably still won't try to repaint until I'm sure it won't happen again. Lights seem fine. Their reasoning was that the dude had a shower without putting a mat down, which doesn't sound right to me at all. I'll try and get more information from them when they come round.

It's possible, I got a knock on my door from the downstairs flat to say they had a bit of water coming through their bathroom ceiling. Only time it happened and it coincided with my half-wit brother having a shower and covering the bathroom floor with water. I've since put a mat down and that soaks up all the water and not had an issue again.

Admittedly it does suggest a more fundamental issue that the floor isn't watertight, which I'm not surprised by at my place as the grouting as knackered, so there is the risk of it happening again.

I live in a ground floor Warner as well, and I have damp in a similar area. Rising damp is incredibly rare despite what surveyors tell you. It's most likely penetrating damp from leaky guttering and/or the wind blowing the rain into the porch area (this happens to me, very annoying!), potentially coupled with condensation due to poor air circulation too.

A few Qs: Do you know if your air bricks are blocked? What kind of windows do you have? How do you dry your clothes in the winter? Are the fireplaces blocked up?

Refill loop, can be away from the boiler. try following the main cold feed.

This is good advice. Pay attention to the exterior when it rains. Water running down brickwork from the drains? Crappy brickwork pointing? Raised ground level outside, particularly when it's been covered in cement?

Interesting! We have double glazing which probably doesn't help and so far have been drying clothes in the living room.
There was a damp stain on that wall when I stripped it back but it didn't go very high and didn't look very bad. The floor boards seemed fine too. Air bricks at the front are OK.

Do you have one of those set back loos as well?

It looks like condensation - drying clothes will raise the humidity, double glazing will keep the moisture inside, the sofa will prevent air circulating, and the wall will be cold as it is expose to the outside and may have a heat bridge.

Moving the sofa may help.

The trouble with external single skin brick walls is that they will get very cold in winter, so the water vapour from drying your clothes in the living room will condense in the cold spots. Behind a sofa is a common cold spot. In the past with open fires and leaky windows this wasn't so much of a problem because there was always good air flow, but nowadays with central heating, hermetically sealed double glazing and blocked up chimneys, it's a recipe for condensation.

Once you've ensured that there's no penetrating damp (as per rodabod above) I would suggest investing in a dehumidifier - you can get them for £100 or so - and leave it running in the living room whenever you're drying clothes there. Even without drying clothes you'll be amazed at the amount of water it collects. Alternatively open the windows and put up with losing a little heat. Also move the sofa away from the wall a bit.

The alternative to all this is to batten out the external walls and plasterboard it to create a pseudo-cavity, but this is annoying and will take away some room space, so see if you can solve it without doing that first!

I've got a 2 bed Warner so I think the layout is slightly different to yours, but the basic construction is the same. The loo is in the bathroom (which was originally a scullery, so the loo had a little partition wall to separate it).

edit: TW beat me to it :)

I'm fairly confident our circulation is good but still run a dehumidifier because we dry clothes in the spare room. I have had two delonghi dem10's which have been great (first was second hand and the compressor died but not before a long and abusive service life) if you need a recommendation. I think @Chalfie bought a different model recently too.

Taking 2 litres of water out if the air everyday is quite the eye opener.

What they all said ^ text book condensation issue. Move the sofa a bit, open the windows and be prepared to wipe off a bit of black stuff every spring.

A north or east wall gets no sun this time of year so will always be chilly.

Nothing to worry about at all.

(not yet bought one) @stevo_com

After looking at the state of our windows in our bedroom this morning, (bed under window, curtains blocking window, 2 adults and a child snoring and farting in there from 3 am most nights it seems) I should probably use one. Loud though eh?

Also, need to sort out actually having some heating control at some point.
(current: ON or OFF no temp control)

The dem10 or similar is rated for a 2 to 3 bedroom house so it doesn't need to be in the same room. So long as your bedroom isn't a sealed lab, it will work wherever you put it but of course be most effective in the room it lives in. It's about as loud as an older fridge I'd say. Same kind of moving parts but not as enclosed.

I got Hive installed for CH as i was in the same boat, no thermostat whatsoever, and I think it's great.