Home DIY

How will a dehumidifier do anything except suck the water from next door's lawn though?

Also definitely not cheaper than chiroshi's £2 insect grills and some holes.

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Update on the wetroom drain.

I was very surprised to find out that the trap is actually a bilge pump. The wetroom has been installed with the outlet from the shower trap at a lower level than the inlet (invert level) of the external drainage. So, presumably to avoid grubbing up and re-laying the external drainage, they installed it with a pump to raise up the waste water.

It makes sense, although it's pretty disappointing.

But what was more disappointing was to find the foul drain was blocked and backing up into the grey water traps in my backyard. And beyond that, the manholes/inspection chambers that would have allowed access to rod this blockage to clear it are covered by brick paving and gravel driveway. FFS, non-maintainable stuff really annoys me. Fortunately I know a drainage company that are good, they turned up promptly, cleared the blockage, CCTV traced the system and explained it all to me.

What are the reasons for not making it at least partly the neighbours problem? I'd be mortified if I were your neighbour and my garden was causing these issues.

The clearing process involved jetting, but from the "wrong" side of the blockage due to the missing manholes. So at one point all the foul sewage overflowed the gullies and flooded the area right outside the kitchen door and garage door.

What is the issue with getting to the outside of the wall? The only real answer is to stop the water getting into the wall in the first place. If you can’t dig up next door the get a gully in and tank the wall, how about just digging a slit trench along the wall and pouring in tanking slurry? If they won’t let you do that drill a load of holes straight through the wall and pump slurry into the gound from your side. Get enough in and it should stop the water.

What are you storing in there that has issues with the humidity? Can you just use it for stuff where it isn't an issue/stick some stuff in waterproof containers?

I would really deal with that issue on the outside...

It an old brick shed, so Idk how mortified you'd actually be.

A bit long but in the interests of crowd sourcing....

We've been here 8 years. Basically, the ground has built up, probably naturally over time. At some point some or part of the fence and concrete posts that would have been there were removed.

Issue 1: For some reason there is a section of brick wall missing from our boundary wall before the shed, in its place there is a wooden fence (yellow/brown on the drawing) that is fixed so it sits further inside our boundary and meets the building. Unfortunately this has meant that the neighbours built a slab butting up to it, which has a storage container thing on top. That slab acts to introduce moisture to the toilet section and obviously blocks access to the wall. They were okay with us having it cut back when we were looking at having a brick wall built to replaced the ropey fence panel, but that (stupidly) got put on the back burner due to cost. But to get proper access to the wall to create drainage and apply some sort of continuous external solution we'd need to trim that slab. From a relationship management pov I'd rather do that at the same time as the wall work.

Issue 2: for some reason, there is a concrete molded reinforcement that also sits above the dpm. It's hard to photo as it's behind a plant pot. That'd also need to be sorted. Which I could probably largely do from my side, but again would rather combine with one job if I need to access their side.

Also for people sceptical about the air brick the current reading is down to 79% after leaving the door open all morning and doing two tumble drying sessions.

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For context my OH is keen to get our outdoor storage in order, so has offered to help tidy and clear it all out. So that part of the job is in the backlog.

Depending on effort, I think as part of this I could get in some internal remediation of the damp - like cleaning the walls, applying tanking slurry and a liquid dpm.

I am skeptical that I can get approval for taking the extra time to excavate the ground next to the wall in the neighbour's garden applying some sort of incomplete or even complete fix.

Can I ask why everyone is writing off tanking the inside?

My logic is that the water will enter the bricks up to the external ground level and then rise, what? 1m? and as it goes up increase the surface area and evaporate. Currently that evaporation is inside (because it's warmer) and outside (because it's closer).

If the wall is tanked on the inside, then the water will be left in the bricks to evaporate externally.

Also externally I have no idea if I'm going to find something stupid like a load of concrete etc.

What are you storing in there that has issues with the humidity?

All my tools. It hasn't really been that much of a problem, just surface rust on some bits.

It's come more on my radar for a couple of reasons;

1. We're getting there on our internal diy,
   
2. Spring is on its way so I'm thinking about Spring/Summer projects.
   
3. Give all the rain I was curious what the humidity was, and was shocked it had hit 90% given it had previously been 70% or so.
   

It an old brick shed, so Idk how mortified you'd actually be.

But it seems to be causing a lot of headache and potential cost to you. It's their slab and their ground level that is over the boundary and creating damp issues. I get the relationship point of view, but if I raised this with my neighbour in a diplomatic way and they didn't want to sort it out, I would be thinking about whether that's a relationship I want to try and keep civil from my side.

we'd need to trim that slab

It's their slab, they need to trim it.

Is it obvious the high humidity is caused by the external wall? If it was wet it would be really obvious inside. The place would smell damp, the bricks would look wet, and frankly you'd have to fix it.

I'd wonder if the high humidity is simply the shed warmed up yesterday, but then got very cold over night, and is well sealed enough that fresh drier air (of which there wasn't much yesterday!) can't get in.

Going to piggyback on this chat as got me thinking...
The cheap Xiaomi thermometer is at 74%. Just moved into my first home so been keeping an eye on it and rarely goes much below 65%.

Currently the outside humidity is 82% according to a few online forecasts.

Should I close all the vents on the windows when the outside humidity is high, when I moved in I just went around and opened every one thinking that constant ventilation was best.

I only put the heating on for an hour or so in the evening, not noticed any condensation anywhere

It's probably colder outside. 82% at 13° is 54% at 20° so if your indoor relative humidity is 72% opening a window should help.

Indoor humidity will be lower than outdoor due to warmer temps (about 15% lower in my experience). Here's the plot of a couple of humidity sensors from my flat:

• The outer hall is an unheated hallway that we share with the flat upstairs. It's not well sealed and is a good 5 deg C colder than inside our flat
  
• The inner hall is pretty representative of our flat. The spikes correlate to (nearby) bathroom use
  

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Thanks both, I might try and see how to connect my sensor up for the data, think you can hack the firmware.
Okay, so it's largely because the house is cold then. So I should keep all the vents open but be less tight fisted about turning the heating on

very satisfying

pray it doesn’t rain for the next 6 hours

In which country are we thinking of applying this product?

In England it's been raining since November.

There are always gaps in the rain, it’s picking the right moment. I sprayed the main drive this morning (I only remembered it was due because of this chat) and it been dry all day!
It says you only need 3 hours, but …

Im tiling the small entrance area to our house

by my calculations the number of tiles width ways fits almost perfectly but will maybe leave a 10-15mm gap at each side. What are you supposed to do here, just grout 15mm each side? adjust spacing between each tile by an extra mm? (currently there is 5mm gap between each).

Its too small a gap that cutting a slither of tile would look odd but would a large-ish grout gap look equally weird?

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You could make a feature of it and use box edge, maybe
https://trimtraders.co.uk/tile-trims/select-by-type/square-edge.html

Is that calculation including skirting boards?

no, the skirting would start where the black box ends (left & right)

If I calculated the width from wall to wall rather than skirting to skirting then there might be space for a slither of tiles on left or right side, then skirting on top.

Would that look better though..

I'd guess 15mm will be acceptable. It's not that wide.