dpc

Hi all, My home has an issue that during its many years of life, number of very questionable building choices have prior to my moving there The worse of which is the lack of ventilation of the space beneath the ground floor. On top of that, the back of the house has a concrete floor...

Hi all, I've got to lower the ground level of my stone walled house to below the DPC. Digging out itself is relatively trivial - most of it is just topsoil - but are there any surprises I should watch out for? I'll have to be careful around the soil stack, obviously. Anything else people have...

Hi there all, I bought a semi detached 1930s house about 1 y and a half ago. In the living r room there used to be a fireplace breast on the party wall which was removed years ago. The first floor breast and stack are still there. When i was buying the house there was a damp in the area and The...

I've dug out a hearth and would like some advice on installing some joists. Please see photos. As you can see the hearth has left a gap. The front wall of the hearth supports the cross joist. I propose the following 1. Keep the cross joist and leave all existing joists as they are 2. Add...

I would like some advice about mould coming through a newly laid laminate flooring. The house was built in the 1920s. We have undertaken some major renovation. Taking each room back to the brick. The dining room floor had a laminate laid which we lifted. The floor underneath was concrete with...

As you can see from this first picture, we are having a massive infiltration problem around the chimney breast. To give some general information, we are at the ground floor of a two storey Victorian house. To the right of the picture there is the external wall. We have been living in the...

During the build of our extension the builder built the walls (outer and inner) before laying the slab. This means the DPM does not go under the course of blocks containing the DPC. Is this a normal practice these days? There is also a gap between the end of DPM in places and the DPC, can this...

I have a double garage sized outbuilding at the back of my property, no longer accessible by a vehicle and have partitioned it down the middle so one side can be used for storage but the other side can be 'kitted out' for office/ gym use. I've had the floor dug out and levelled with 100mm...

Hi I have a 600mm gas DPC bridging the cavity and I need to install a cavity tray with this. I started to use some polythene DPC as the cavity tray and mortared 20-30mm of this DPC cavity tray on top of the gas DPC of the external leaf. I'm worried in case any water seeps under the cavity...

Hi, We had a patio done over a year ago, but have started noticing some damp and some smells. Upon investigating one possible cause could be that the patio seems to be badly laid and not following standard rules e.g. butting up against external wall too high, no drain for rain water and fall...

Hi I am doing an extension and had a trial hole dug for the foundations which was to 1.4m (deep due to trying to find good ground - point 1 below). The water table was oily/contaminated and ground is obviously made up ground. My council building inspector came out and inspected the hole and...

Hi for my extension build I wanted to check what point I needed to build the engineering brickwork up to for DPC The back of the current house has DPC below the Internal Floor level - I think is because it is a timber floor with space for vent. For my new extension, I was going to brick up to...

Hi, I'm building an out-house - can the internal floor level be lower than the external DPC Level? i.e. Screed come to lower than the DPC brick? Looking to try and get some more internal height - will this cause any damp etc. issues?

hi, I have a garden that sits on top of an underground car park. In my garden there is a DPC membrane covering the entire surface area also coming up the side of the property. Previously this was covered by about 80 sq metres of decking. I’m now ripping up the decking which is rotten through...

We had a conservatory removed at the back of our house and are planning on replacing it with a patio. However, the concrete slab that was under the conservatory is only about 75mm below the DPC, so by the time we put the paving on it and factor in a fall away from the house, the ground level...

Hi I will be using periscope vents to air under a block and beam floor and wondered about the below ground cavity fill. All the regs say to fill the cavity to 225mm below DPC although this will partly encase the vents in said concrete; is that okay? Also when I am at DPC the building inspector...

Hi It seems i'm trying for the record of the longest time taken to do an extension! I am hitting so many problems! After much advice & discussion with several structural engineers and the recommendation of the building officer, I am having the foundations for my two storey extension piled...

To the left is the extension, on the right at 90deg to this is the original house wall. To the right of the patio door is next doors garden wall, running parallel with the extension. I have removed the existing concrete slab, which was less than 150mm below dcp level. We had no issues stepping...

Hi All, I have just bought an old 2 story singleskin (no cavity) mid-terraced house that has suspended wooden floors throughout. Ive been hacking away at the ungodly amount of renovations that need doing and come across one that has me stumped... A more recent extension has been built running...

Ramp to next door above my DPC.