advice on damp cold room

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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on October 29, 2010 at 15:04

Most ladder houses are a double brick construction on external walls which you can have cavity filled which is another option to consider

Are you sure about this, Antoinette? I may be wrong but I'd have thought most 1880s terraced house construction would still have been in 9" solid brickwork. Yes, double brick construction, as you say, but I wouldn't have thought there was that much cavity wall building before the early 20th century. I know it did feature in some late Victorian detached house building, but most Edwardian terrace building was solid-wall, and even after 1918 there was a lot of solid-wall construction.

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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on October 29, 2010 at 18:57

The rear extension parts are definitely built this way. The main structural walls to the front and main building will be solid wall. That's how ours is anyway. But then we also have peculiar internal walls which are stud wood partitioning in-filled with brick.

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Permalink Reply by Clare on October 29, 2010 at 14:55

Hi

I know what you mean about multiple opinions. My most recent experience was severe damp in a room downstairs for which a damp proof course was recommended. The actual cause was the guttering which was draining into the subfloor ventilation grille which looked a bit like a drain but was not a drain. I recommend that you pay a surveyor to look at it and advise i.e. not someone who is going to make money from selling you a solution. Even a small leak from guttering joins outside can cause large damp patches in a room if the water hits the wall. Another cause is leaking around the chimney as chimneys are weak points in terms of water ingress on a roof (check pointing and flashing). In my experience you as the householder have to figure out what is wrong. I am coming to the end of sorting out a lot of problems in an old house and have found the sarah beeny website 'help my house is falling down' and other websites on damp really useful in terms of working out what is wrong myself and getting the right person in to fix it. I hope you get to the bottom of it. Good luck. Clare

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Permalink Reply by woody on October 29, 2010 at 19:22

Thanks everyone for your help. We have a few more people coming over to give advice and will let you know any outcomes. Really appreciate everyone taking the time and will certainly think about all the different options before jumping into anything.

Thanks :-)

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