Is it even worth continuing to decorate this plastered wall?

[CluelessDIYer1]

Firstly, i've put this in the plastering forum rather than the decorating forum because this is all reliant on the plastering side of this job - the plastering will affect whether we can decorate or not, rather than the decorating affecting the plaster. That's why i put it here, to pick the plasterers brains - just in case anyone wonders why it didn't go in the decorating forum.

Short of it:

damp wall was boarded out, dot & dabbed. I was warned (by co-workers) of the circle effect & when asking the ones doing the job, i was told the wall wasn't piddle wet through & they were tanking, so i wont have this problem - don't worry.

Let it dry out & i could see every circle. It then faded & returned.

I patch painted to see what it'd look like.



I don't want to waste expensive paint by layering up if there's zero point.

My gut feeling tells me i could put 100 layers on that & those circles would STILL show through.

Not too sure how wallpapering would fare though (i know, let it dry out properly. I'm talking about papering in 12 months time).

Time passed since wall was boarded & skimmed .... 4 weeks.


I've already been warned by another plasterer that the whole thing MAY need to come off & start again, different approach.

Just wondering if i'm wasting my time painting it & will they show through wallpaper?

 

[roy c]

Did they hack off all the plaster on the wall before tanking it, and then scratch and float the wall or just scratch it ,or did they just tank over the original wall ? And was the wall wet/damp before .What tanking system did they use and did they tank the whole wall or just up a few feet? What is on the outside of the wall ?Can you get some pictures up of the outside...You cant just tank a wall and then dot and dab it, They should of found the cause of the damp and sorted that out and I would think you would have to leave the tanking a while before applying anything on it...Maybe it was all done too quickly..

 

[CluelessDIYer1]

Thanks for the response. I'll do my best to answer...

Did they hack off all the plaster on the wall before tanking it,

Yes.

The agreement was that ALL the plaster would come off. Or, if we left them to do it then they'd charge £50 extra. We went for this, but then decided to have a bash ourselves & got quite an amount of to the left of & including the chimney breast.
Did they knock that £50 down? No.

More annoyingly though, they just 'patched in' to the right hand side of the chimney breast instead of taking all that plaster off as agreed.

I wonder if we'd not started removing so much plaster, whether they'd have taken much off at all.

and then scratch and float the wall or just scratch it ,or did they just tank over the original wall ?

We were at work so didn't get to see much. I don't think they put a layer on of anything as this wasn't discussed.
It's only through talking to other plasterers where they say they'd layer it with a sand & cement mix. Some would mix Cementone Freeflo with it, some would mix i think SBR was the name given.
So i believe they just tanked the wall

And was the wall wet/damp before

Yes.

It had new plaster (sand & cement mix perhaps) about a metre up, then there was about a 1-1.5ft band where it was so soft i could make holes in the wall with my hand. It was the original 1930s hair plaster.

.What tanking system did they use and did they tank the whole wall or just up a few feet?

Sorry i don't know what system they used, although i do know they only tanked a band approx 2ft from the base of the wall. They said it'd be about £30 a tub of this stuff.

What is on the outside of the wall ?

By outside do you mean the other side?
If so then our neighbours living room. They also have issues with damp

Can you get some pictures up of the outside

Outside the house? From the front? Or do you mean the other side of that wall - our neighbours living room?...

You cant just tank a wall and then dot and dab it,

You can't or you're not supposed to?

If the former then i wonder what they did, if the latter then i'd say they did it.

They should of found the cause of the damp and sorted that out

We know the cause. I paid for an independent damp surveyor to come out & it's non fixable.

There is water underneath the living room floorboards. The subfloor is about a 1mtr drop. There's a sump pump in place to manage it. I've been in touch with the council & water board & pretty much the only thing we can do it manage it, not solve it. This means sump pump & the correct approach for the walls in the living room.

Our neighbour has the same problem with the water & sump pump & apparently others do on our road & the roads either side of us too.

and I would think you would have to leave the tanking a while before applying anything on it...Maybe it was all done too quickly..

They most certainly didn't leave it any length of time. A few hours yes, as one day ticked into the next, but that was it.

 

[roy c]

Ok you have got a damp problem and living on a lake seems to extenciate your problem. So what you have to do is concentrate on forming a "barrier between you and your damp problem. So the damp problem is still there but is doing its own thing and not harming you.I live in a mid 1800's Victorian house with 20" stone walls and no means of a DPC so what I did on the ground floor was (I have mentioned this before in other posts) to hack off all the render and rake out the joints in the stone work and throw a sand lime cement mix on (Scutted it on as opposed to scratching it )then I dot and dabbed it with Polystyrene backed p/board, making sure that when the boards abutted each other there was a strip of DPC to stop them touching any outside walls. I did this over ten years ago and no probs yet, I have recently done the bed rooms upstairs but I hacked the plaster off and put poly sheets against the wall and metal stud work in front of it and rockwooled that.(Can recommend gyproc metal studding (sorry mods not advertising) as is ten times quicker than wood studs. Anyway the walls were really bad in the bed rooms as my gable was cracked and had started to show thru the walls!! So you can see what I did. The guy next door was being arsey with me getting on his felt roof and trying to fix my gable so I did the repairs from inside my house and will use my "Ladder Rights " in the summer if I have to. I have took photos of the two bedrooms and will try and load them into my albums when I can get my nipper off his x-box to do them for me. So don't dispair there is always a way. My ole man used to say "Where there's a will there's always a Relative!!"

 

[CluelessDIYer1]

Thanks for the reply.

My wife asked me this afternoon whether wallpapering would solve this.

I said i'd asked but am yet to receive response. Someone at work said they thought it'd show through the wallpaper, but i don't want to go on 'thought', i'd like to know from someone who's experienced it - whether papering is successful or not in hiding it.

My guess is not, otherwise the solution would be simple.

 

[roy c]

My take on that would be, if there are damp spots on the wall then surely the paste on the wall paper could not dry out !!! Simples

 

[joe-90]

It doesn't look like any sort of damp to me. What it looks like is when the wall has been hacked back, chunks of brick have been knocked out and filled with mortar that is taking a bit longer to dry due to its depth.

 

[CluelessDIYer1]

It doesn't look like any sort of damp to me. What it looks like is when the wall has been hacked back, chunks of brick have been knocked out and filled with mortar that is taking a bit longer to dry due to its depth.

Really?

Why would they remove random sections of brickwork on the party (or any) wall?

I'm not saying you're right or wrong as the clue is in the name - i'm clueless at this. All i'm saying is it ties in with everything i've read about dot & dab on a wall that has suffered damp.

The only difference is virtually everything i've read has been about walls that have been exterior, such as the one facing your garden & not a party wall.

I've been spoken to about the circular dabs that will be used to fix the plasterboard & sure enough - circular sections are showing as you can see.

So i can understand the talk about D&D on a damp wall, but i don't understand why they'd remove random bricks for no good reason.

 

[joe-90]

Chisels and lump hammers are hardly precise. Dot and dab damp circles need condensation from within the house to appear. It's not cold enough for that on those walls unless it backs onto the neighbours chimney breast. Chimney breasts are different, you get funny effects from them.

 

[CluelessDIYer1]

Chisels and lump hammers are hardly precise. Dot and dab damp circles need condensation from within the house to appear. It's not cold enough for that on those walls unless it backs onto the neighbours chimney breast. Chimney breasts are different, you get funny effects from them.

If it helps then the other side of that party wall (the neighbours living room) is even worse than ours it seems.

In sections around the chimney breast (side of) you can physically see wet on the walls.

They also came to our house to ask the workmen if they'd been using power tools on the walls (they hadn't) because their electricity kept tripping out. It turned out that there was water running through the wall & getting into the socket back plate which was rusty as hell.

I don't know what's between our walls, whether it's cavity or how thick it is. No idea at all.

 

[joe-90]

Then it sounds like the damp is caused by condensing water inside the chimney from either combustion gases or a damp house (Washing drying on rads). No point tanking the bottom. The whole lot needs tanking all the way up.

 

[CluelessDIYer1]

Then it sounds like the damp is caused by condensing water inside the chimney from either combustion gases or a damp house (Washing drying on rads). No point tanking the bottom. The whole lot needs tanking all the way up.

Well that'd certainly not be on our side then - we don't use the fire & the previous owners said they never used the fire either as they used the central heating instead.

I don't think the neighbours used the fire either too tbh. We live in a smoke free zone & the fires are gas anyway.

The flaunching on the chimney stack was knackered which we've had sorted (January). Probably not the cause, but perhaps a contribution? Who knows.

We were debating over installing one of those modern gas fires as ours looks like:

Although not as nice, but we'd prefer something on the lines of:

With that said, IMO it looks nice, but i wonder whether we'd even use it. If it was a 'proper' fire then perhaps, but we'd probably just use central heating more, so it'd be pointless shelling out for a nice looking fire if we'll never use it.

We did originally get in touch with Peter Cox who were going to charge just above £3k to 'inject' a DPC & replaster. Whenever we spoke to someone about this, they winced when we mentioned the price & said how it was way way waaaaaaaaay too much.

 

[joe-90]

Gas fires put out a lot of water vapour that soaks into the brickwork. Nowt to do with the flaunching. When washing is dried in the house there are litres and litres of water vapour that have to go somewhere. Up the chimney and condense is the usual path.

 

[CluelessDIYer1]

Then it would have to be the washing since they said they never used the gas fire.

That said, the independent damp surveyor said the cause was the underfloor water. There's quite a significant amount, enough to require a sump pump that must kick in every few days. The floorboards are slightly curved upwards. He said this was due to the moist air underneath caused by the amount of water down there. The joists were reading high levels too.

Strangely though, i've just thought - the water runs from the rear & collects at the front, yet it's the wall to the left of the chimney breast (rear) which was the worst by far & not the wall to the right (closer to front of house), which was bad enough, but nowhere near AS bad.

 

[CluelessDIYer1]

On the topic of the wall... what are these splat marks?



As when you paint over it it shows through:


Ok that's just a mist coat of Dulux Trade SuperMatt.

Does it disappear with subsequent coats? Though, it seems to show through quite strongly.

Does it need to get sanded with fine paper first? I don't want to paint it all only to find out i should've [done something first] and then it ends up being patchy or whatever.