Owning your own home

Window companies will have premises right, I'm sure you'll get a better response walking into a shop than calling or emailing

Anyone have a recommendation for someone to advise / visit / treat damp related issues in South East London?

Have just moved into a 1920s house (this Tues!)

House is lovely, but some of the walls on exterior sides feel seriously cold and we've seen some signs of damp. I think its probably just condensation related but would like someone to come and have a look - would be keen to put insulation in the necessary places if that would fix it, but conscious of keeping that "letting the building breathe" factor too...

Has it been empty and unheated for any time before you moving in?

No, not at all - sellers were late out as we were trying to move in!

I'm in a 1930 house with similar issues. They are a lot less of a problem with a bit of ventilation (eg open trickle vents in double glazing) and lots of close attention to drainpipes.

Interesting, ta - yep, none of the windows have vents… they’re all lovely wood frame ones so really hope we don’t have to change them out! What do you mean about drainpipes - are you thinking of water ingress from leaking ones? I didn’t think this was rain related given its not been too wet, but it could be.

The most visible place seems to be the rear wall, in red here, and in the (now closed off) fireplace:

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Is the cooker extractor working?

Sounds like it is - I haven’t tracked through the pipe to the exterior though.

(The worst it has been is when we’ve used the oven though, which doesn’t have an extractor - which makes me think it is probably condensation related).

My thinking is it is prob condensation but the lack of insulation on 1920s brickwork makes it worse - the rear wall feels freezing.

The main place we’ve seen it is on that rear wall, which is where the fridge used to be (and is now ours has arrived too) - i wonder if the warmth of a fridge keeps the wall warm enough to stop the condensation, but if so that doesn’t seem ideal and we’d maybe be better off trying to insulate better.

We also have a damp issue in the back end our house (downstairs toilet). On advice of a friendly builder (thats due to do work on our cellar next month) I dug out the back wall in the garden and left it to see what happened, the tide mark hasn't grown but the paint is blowing and salts are coming through.

I definitely think this wasn't dealt with correctly when it was refurbed by the person we bought it from, I queried it as i noticed some damp, but nothing to the extent it's at now, the house was unoccupied and unheated for ages in the process (so i thought that might be the issue), but this is the main problem area.

I've pulled off the skirting board to see what's going on and the plaster is all the way to the flooring, I'm wondering if i should just hack out an inch all the way around and see if that stops it bridging to the walls, or just take the whole lot off and start again?

Our plan is to get rid of the toilet and put the washing machine in here so we can get a dishwasher in the kitchen.

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These old houses are really leaky so condensation is unlikely to cause really significant problems - unless you are doing mad stuff like constantly air drying clothes 24/7.

Condensation will only cause dramatic problems if the place has been sealed up, i.e. all windows / doors have good seals, the sub floor has been sealed over, the ventilation air bricks removed or boarded over, the fireplaces sealed over, the roof space sealed over etc.

Obvious things to check based on your diagram

• sink or pipework leaking
  
• some fuck up with the way the fireplace / chimney has been dealt with
  
• fucked guttering / roofing causing water to run down the outside of the building
  

Hmmm, I’d really thought that rear wall was condensation just because it came from nowhere - wall looked dry in the afternoon, we cooked dinner (no windows open, mostly in gas oven on high) and then the base of that part of the rear wall shown in red suddenly looked wet. We cracked open a window a bit and it went away pretty quickly…

Will have a look at leaky pipe work as well, that is a possibility. Fireplace definitely is as the inside of the fireplace itself feels damp - they’ve build a cupboard in the alcove and had to put vents in the doors… I’d assumed that was condensation as well though, as it feels cold at the back of that alcove so I’d thought it was just a thermal bridge and colder than the rest of the walls.

I’d be surprised if its leaky guttering etc as the damp bits aren’t near where the guttering runs.

When it comes to calling a pro to look at this stuff, who to aim for? I am aware damp specialists will just want to inject some nonsense into my house, which i am sceptical of…

Is the wall next to the door significantly different externally? IE is it more recent? If a window or somethings was blocked in and a new rear door added, they might have bodged the filling in part. For the chimney wall, salt deposits from soot can make a wall damp IIRC.

Get a dehumidifier, will make the please easier to heat too.

All the walls look roughly the same as each other - the ground floor is pebbledashed all round and there's some slight flaking near that rear door, but the door isn't super recent - it's a wood frame basic double glazed door.

Interesting about the soot - I wonder if that's a factor

Maybe that's the way forward, does seem a bit like treating the symptom not the cause though!

For sure, but would buy you the time to improve ventilation/extraction etc.

If the place is quite sealed up, get a dehumidifier and run it on high for a few days, see what happens. FWIW in our place - 1920s terrace - the internal humidity in the kitchen / ground floor is roughly aligned with the outside humidity, and that's with double glazing and the flooring pretty well sealed over. Does have working chimneys though...You can fight it with a dehumidifier but as soon as you shut it down it's back to doing what it's doing outside!

Seems curious that cooking in an oven can create enough humidity to do what you describe. Maybe if you had a load of pans on the boil with no lids? Condensation usually appears at the corners of windows, worth checking there too.

If this is simply the kitchen not being ventilated properly then it could be as simple as putting an extractor fan through the kitchen wall and venting the damp kitchen air outside. That's a builder / handyman job. A damp person won't want to suggest that because they'd rather sell products that appear specialist and carry low risk (to them) and high margins.

Opening the kitchen window when you cook will come a close second, but it's no help when it's pissing down outside and outside humidity > humidity in your kitchen.

I had some overflowing gutters and leaking drainpipes. It means when it does rain the wall gets much wetter and it takes months to dry out once it is saturated.

When the house was built it probably had open fireplaces and air bricks in the room. Over the years they get blocked off to get rid of drafts and then moisture has nowhere to go. Or at least that is my theory but I'm not qualified.

I didn’t think it was that sealed up TBH (based on the drafts from the doors etc), but the cold wall + fact the wet patches came up so quickly made me think it must be condensation - plus it seemed to be on the outside of the paper rather than looking like it was seeping from behind.

Yeah I’d not have expected the oven to do that, but wondered if maybe there is more moisture from a gas oven (which we had to put on full as it doesn’t seem as effective as the electric we’re used to).

I had wondered about just putting a decent extractor fan in the wall to see what happens - there’s a vent already in the wall pretty low down so we could try that without needing to change anything else, although placing isn’t ideal.

Ended up being cheaper to buy this and it comes with 6 keys than to get the internals changed

What website did you use for quotes?

Does anyone have a PIV (Positive Input Ventilation) system installed?

I'm looking at one to help with mould. It's in a 1950s brick semi and our North wall, where our staircase runs, is both external facing and unheated. It's supposed to have cavity wall insulation, but I sometimes wonder how properly it was done. The double glazing we have looks fairly cheap and doesn't have those trickle vent things.

They don't look that expensive and seem straight forward to DIY fit - at least in our location.

What website did you use for quotes?

Checkatrade - would you suggest something else?

I'm looking at one to help with mould. It's in a 1950s brick semi and our North wall, where our staircase runs, is both external facing and unheated. It's supposed to have cavity wall insulation

Is it possible to heat that area instead? Electric radiator?

Not really.

It's a small staircase and the landing at the top isn't that big either, nor is there a plug. Plus it's the sort of thing that will be a hard sell to my OH.

Still it might be worth measuring up. Also there must be an electrical cable in the general area as the lights for our kitchen cupboards comes down from there. But I imagine an electric heater would need some sort of special circuit. So what's that:

• electrician = £500?
  
• slimline heater = £150-250?
  
• make good = £25?
  Total = £700-800?
  
  

Vs
~£400 for a PIV....

... maybe a lot more if we need a heated one and the heater uses enough to make me worried about adding it with a fused spur to the circuit in the loft.