Boundary Wall

[Gail06]

Can anyone help please? We recently moved into our current house, which has a kitchen extension on the back. The left kitchen wall is on the boundary to our neighbour's land, and it is very damp. Every time it rains a bit more plaster falls off it:-; A couple of excellent brick specialists have been doing some work for us. They identified the cause of the damp as the concrete render on the outside of the wall, which was cracked and letting water in. It is a solid wall (built around the turn of the last century), so they suggested taking off the concrete and replacing it with lime render. We asked permission from our neighbour, as they would have to access his garden to do the work. After much discussion he very reluctantly agreed, but has threatened to sue us if any of his plants are damaged by the work. I have promised to buy him any replacement plants if necessary. The builders are half way through the job, but have identified another problem. The decorative edging of the neighbour's concrete patio, and the soil of the flower bed beside it, are right up against our wall and above the level of our kitchen floor. A damp specialist has identified that this is blocking the internal damp proof course that we have in the kitchen, causing damp on the wall. He also said we probably need to get the wall injected externally, to stop damp rising up from the ground. This work would mean asking our neighbour if we can cut a trench 12" away from the wall through the patio and his flower bed and filling it with shingle, to let the wall breathe. I'm pretty sure he's going to say no. But we have to do something, as the brickwork is crumbling from the water damage. Can anyone help please?

 

[^woody^]

If you have an awkward neighbour, then you could alleged that this is a Statutory Nuisance under the EPA 1990, and get the council involved, who could (after investigating) then serve an abatement notice on the neighbour to remove the cause of the dampness - ie remove his soil of face the local magistrate

Alternatively, you could treat your wall internally to stop damp coming through

 

[joe-90]

Brick specialists? Damp specialists? They're out to fleece you mate. All you had to do was fill the cracks and paint it. If it dried up you could do a better job next time it leaked in 10 years time. If it didn't dry up then penetrating damp was never your problem. Sounds like a gutter problem to me. Unless you live on the coast and the rain comes sideways, I've never seen penetrating damp - ever. Look how many houses have no render whatsoever. Are they damp? Nope. All that will happen is your neighbour's garden gets trashed and you fall out with him. Why bother?