Home DIY

Anyone had experience of retrofitting a physical DPC in a wall?* Pretty sure mine original DPC is bridged in a way that would make it unfeasibly destructive to cure (concrete floor in Victorian building) unsurprisingly DPC injections have done nowt. Not sure given the non-period floor that the heritage/lime plaster approach would work.

*Just to be clear I would GSI not DIY lest my house falls down.

Ohhhhh share plans Fred.

If I wanted to raise a step by 2 inches, how would I go about it?

Let's call the hallway sea level, then the kitchen has a step up with a lip on it (a sill?). This sits under the architrave of the doorway, then the wooden floorboards of the kitchen are at that level, then there's 1.5 inches of concrete ramp at the other end.

My non builder mind presumes: I would take off the architrave, then find a thicker piece of wood to replace the sill, or just stick something on top of the current one, cut in to the existing architrave (most likely fit a new one). The aim is to get the doorway to be the same height (or slightly higher) than the concrete at the far end of the kitchen so I can prepare the wooden floorboards/fill in above them to be a constant height across the room in preparation for putting in karndean/similar.

A picture would help. I've read your description 3 times but can't visualise what you're describing.

No idea, but it sounds like a nightmare of a job that you'd only consider after all other avenues have been tried.

Is the concrete floor attached to the inner brickwork? Is that how the original DPC has been bridged?

Has anyone had any success removing fiberglass resin from things* fibreglass resin should not have been attached to?

* is this case, glass

Lucky it's glass so you could try any number of chemicals. I would probably start with a very sharp (new) scraper blade. If that doesn't work, Acetone (nail polish remover) maybe.

Maybe. I suspect the glass has a UV and self cleaning coating of some kind. There's an opportunity here to make the situation worse (further damage) before it gets better (new panel) I think.

yep.

A coating that reacts with UV rays in sunlight to generate a photocatalytic process, that loosens and breaks down organic dirt particles on the surface of the glass. The surface of the coating is hydrophilic. Therefore, instead of forming droplets, it attracts water so that it spreads and forms a thin film that ‘sheets’ away quickly, and dries off without leaving unsightly ‘drying spots’. Self cleaning glass leaves less dirt and grime adhering to the glass resulting in the glass staying cleaner for longer, meaning less maintenance is needed.

Fucking hell, masking the glass off would have taken what, 5 minutes?

A razor would work, I'd have thought - you could use one of those cermaic hob scraper things.

[Edit] page refresh says no.

Call it art and enjoy it.

Maybe create an Eth token.

Yeah the concrete is poured right up to the wall so the existing DPC is either bridged, failed or just doesnt exist (fully internal pier so I could see how this would be the case). Plastic DPC at the edges of the floor but that isn't where the issue is. Most of the external walls are also plastered in gypsum and don't have the same problems. To complicate matters the electricity feed comes up by the base of the pier so that's either the cause for the DPC failure or at least makes fixing it more complicated. I guess this feed is not original but went in before the floor.

At the moment by best option looks like live with it and sell the place as soon as we can afford to, it's far from the only issue with the house.

Well that does complicate things. Not a clue what might fix that.

A new panel, I suspect. Manufacturer says clean it with soap and water or 1 part white vinegar to 10 water. When I told them what was on it they were like, 'yeah, that's bad'.

We're replacing out fridge / freezer - it's a ballache, because cost, but a blessing, because I can drill a hole through the wall to run a cable from the consumer unit to the outside wall.

I have a problem with taking the units down though - as in I have no idea what to do

The top and bottom are held in by metal dowels. I can release these, but there is no wriggle room to take them out, and without them removed, I can't remove the side panel.

Given that out kitchen only has another ~2 years before we redo it, is it worth just cutting through the dowels, and using angle brackets when I put it back together?

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When the kitchen was built it's likely they would have slid the unit in there and fixed it in place. Can you find those fixings, unscrew them and slide the whole thing out?

Possibly screwed through under the hinges of the cupboard next to it or just from the inside.

I guess it could have been the first thing in and the walls/cupboards are at a slight angle keeping it in place.

If you can cut the dowels with a multi tool and slide the panel out there's not much downside to using angle brackets unless they snag the new fridge/freezer.

Came off easily with a sharp blade, so hopefully bullet dodged. Possibly saved by the fact that the glass was very dusty and mucky so not a whole lot for it to key in to.

@TW ^

Cheers for the suggestions - I hadn't even thought to slide it out.

It looks as though it was been screwed through (with pretty bog standard wood screws), from the cupboard on the left, prior to that cupboard being fitted - As in , there's no way to access the screw head without removing the cupboard, and no way to cut the screws either, because of access.

Looks like I'm trying to cut the dowels and hoping to bodge any snags away.

We're currently filling in chasing from a rewire in our house - we've been using Easifil at the moment to see if we can stomach doing the whole house. The walls are lime plaster onto solid brick walls.

Should we be doing it a different way? Some videos are suggesting using Thistle Bonding as a first fill then Easifill over top, whereas other more puritan posters are saying that I should be sticking to Lime only, like this stuff here.

.

I wouldn't have thought that such a small a bit of modern plaster / filler is going to significantly impair the permeability of the wall as a whole (particularly as most modern paints are going to be doing that anyway).

There are some bits where the plaster has blown and pulled away when we’ve removed wallpaper - would you still think that bonding and easifil be the way to go?

We’re going to try and use clay paint where budget permits as well.

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I am no tiler. Waiting for the border tiles to come back into stock (will be a double run of 25*25mm rust coloured tiles cut from mosaic sheets. Colour match for the thin lines in the main tiles). Then some sort of wood trim. Finally got round to buying an angle grinder to do the two corner cuts. Worked a treat.

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The foreground is the hallway. It leads into this step up to the kitchen The grey floorboards form the first part of the kitchen floor. About halfway through the kitchen the boards end and wonky concrete begins with a steep slope up about 1.5 inches. I guess I'd like to raise the step in the foreground by two inches so we can fill up the floorboards to be on the same line as the concrete. Will then install some kind of solid floor a la Karndean. I'd love to get someone in to do the whole job but have had zero quotes or interest in several months of trying.

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lol - designs are a generous term for my plans. they're done in indesign and involve reusing as much old shed as possible (hence the two windows at the back).

It's going up though.

EPDM ordered from Avenir Roofing and Jouplast decking risers are great if you have an uneven base

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related to the above - I was going to clad the front (only visible) face but doing some research am not 100% sure. What other options do I have to finish the front? there will be large double glazed wooden french doors in the middle of the front wall