Damp, tanking?

joe-90 said:

I lived in a house like that when I was a kid. It all depends where the house is situated. If it's on chalk then fine, but if it's on clay you are going to get ill. Ours made us all ill. Neither do people want a draughty house. You don't drive a horse and cart - so don't live in a damp house.

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There is no reason (apart from lack of money!) to live in a damp house, but it would be more logical to say "You don't drive a horse and cart - so don't live in an old house."

However, people do want to live in old houses (even though not many want to drive a horse and cart). Therefore it's important to treat the old house right and not try to make it something that it isn't like a modern sealed box. As I said, this house works as intended when built 170 years ago and I would hope that if you saw it you would understand.

cheers possel, i should get a chance to properly read your blog later.
And i drive a landrover, not too dissimilar to a horse and cart

Houses were damp in the old days and people were ill. That's why they changed the regs. You live in the past if you like but that's similar to a cave and it will make you ill too.

i have been trawling the internet and have found izonil plaster, would this be a suitable replacement for lime plaster? it certainly claims to be!

joe-90 said:

Houses were damp in the old days and people were ill. That's why they changed the regs. You live in the past if you like but that's similar to a cave and it will make you ill too.

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You haven't read what I said. This house is made of stone and lime, and it is bone dry! Just because you had a bad experience does not, in this case, make you right.

I say again, using modern materials on an old house is a sure step to ensuring that it has damp problems.

I've followed this lime vs tanking debate carefully and it seems there are proponents of both systems. My personal experiece is a 1800 house made from a very porous stone and lime mortar with various 'repairs' with cement on various parts of the house. One room was bad and it was the interior walls that were worse despite the exterior being cement pointed ontop of lime. Floor had been DPC membraned beneath a shellac wood floor since snaded back and recoated. The solution I chose was 1m from floor tank and replaster and I can say 6years hence I'm very happy with the result. Perhaps it will take long to 'fail' but ther room has been bone dry compared with the 'breathable' corridor outside. Not that it's that bad just that it gets rising damp in heavy rain (house built on clay). Another area was a gutter problem which kept a wall wet and leaked inside at celing level. Fix gutter, big improvement, and then used a brushed on silcone which I did as an immediate quick repair. This has stop the spalling and the wall gettting wet and as a result I've not bothered following up with further repairs. Several other issues which were dealt with by fixing the roof and soffit/fascias/felt. These were largely cause by that part of ther roof being to shallow for loose roman tiles but hey ho I can't easily make the pitch steeper without huge expense. Current issue is an outbuilding that has damp lime walls which do dry quickly but if as I do, I want a modern plastered interior then the same issues present. I think I'm going to repoint the exterior wall with lime and then tank ther inside. Imho best of both worlds, exterior can breathe, interior can stay dry. Don't worry roof and guttering are sound.