I have been dealing with an ongoing damp problem in one corner of my dining room. This came to light when we had a new solid oak floor installed and the whole thing buckled! Using a damp Meter I identified that one corner of the room was far damper that the rest, 20% against the 1-2% around the rest of the room. Directly outside of this corner is concreted away from the house into a pathetic excuse for a soak away, which is around 10” deep and around 1.5m from the exterior wall and filled with pea gravel.
I broke open the concrete outside the damp corner (which was partially covering the original air brick) to reveal an electrical conduit pipe had been fed from inside the house under the damp proof course to a point on the garden that the previous owner was planning to use for a possible extension.
The damp in the room is mirrored by a large damp spot in the garage. Several bricks have efflorescence.
To my uneducated eye It looks like the water was going down the soak away, under the patio and into the hole for the conduit and under the floor. From here it was being sucked up the cavity wall by a mixture of sand and builders rubble. I opened the cavity and removed two rubble sacks worth of this delightful mixture. I did try raking but if you have cavity ties then this is difficult.
My plan is now to
1. Put all the bricks back in the clean cavity wall
2. lower the patio to be clear of the DPC
3. Pave over the soak away
4. install a linear drain tight against the house
5. Change the patio slope to run towards this drain not the Soak away
6. Take out the conduit and brick up the hole
7. Change the airbrick for a smaller one higher up the DPC
My questions are;
1. I did check the roof and found no leaks or wonky/broken tiles. I think that I have diagnosed the problem but is there anything else I should check?
2. I need to get the conduit out, but it’s not playing ball. How best to cut it far enough back to bet e brick in (I would use burning gear but cant access any)
3. The guy who built this extension was apparently a builder. Is it common for a builder to bump a couple of bags of builders sand into the cavity?
I broke open the concrete outside the damp corner (which was partially covering the original air brick) to reveal an electrical conduit pipe had been fed from inside the house under the damp proof course to a point on the garden that the previous owner was planning to use for a possible extension.
The damp in the room is mirrored by a large damp spot in the garage. Several bricks have efflorescence.
To my uneducated eye It looks like the water was going down the soak away, under the patio and into the hole for the conduit and under the floor. From here it was being sucked up the cavity wall by a mixture of sand and builders rubble. I opened the cavity and removed two rubble sacks worth of this delightful mixture. I did try raking but if you have cavity ties then this is difficult.
My plan is now to
1. Put all the bricks back in the clean cavity wall
2. lower the patio to be clear of the DPC
3. Pave over the soak away
4. install a linear drain tight against the house
5. Change the patio slope to run towards this drain not the Soak away
6. Take out the conduit and brick up the hole
7. Change the airbrick for a smaller one higher up the DPC
My questions are;
1. I did check the roof and found no leaks or wonky/broken tiles. I think that I have diagnosed the problem but is there anything else I should check?
2. I need to get the conduit out, but it’s not playing ball. How best to cut it far enough back to bet e brick in (I would use burning gear but cant access any)
3. The guy who built this extension was apparently a builder. Is it common for a builder to bump a couple of bags of builders sand into the cavity?
to take "ground level" back where it used to be, as well as restoring a slope away from the house.
