Hello all.
After 5 years (!) of saving for a deposit, my wife and I have just moved into our first home, a 200 yr old cottage which is in need of some TLC.
The first job was to try to sort a bit of damp we have on the inside of the back wall of the house. My initial thought was to drop the level of the back yard, which was quite high, almost up to floor level, and with no DPC.
After spending 3 days smashing up the old patio and sub-base, dropping the ground level by 100mm and carting over 150 bags of rubble to the tip in my car, I bought a load of slate flags and asked a builder to come and lay them. I wanted an ACO drain across the back wall of the house as extra damp protection, so the builder suggested we might as well just slope the patio TOWARDS the house since the water would run off into the ACO drain. This didnt sit too well with me but the logic seems fair enough, but the problem is that the ACO drain doesn't run the full length of the back wall! The builder couldn't figure out how to join in an extra bit of of ACO in the area behind the soil pipe (see photo) as the soil pipe is really in the way, so he just cemented that area in. No big problem so far, but when he put in the long length of ACO, it is sitting too high, about 5mm higher than the flags! Rain water on the patio now runs down towards the house, hits the edge of the ACO drain, and then runs sideways until it pools in the cemented area. This is EXACTLY the area where we have damp on the inside of the house, so what we've ended up with is a patio which very effectively channels water to the exact area we were trying to protect!
I am planning on remedying this situation as we have lost faith in the builder's understanding of the problem (there are other problems with the patio too which I won't go into).
We are going to drop the level of the long run of ACO so that it drains properly, but i'm still not sure how to patch in a bit more ACO in that damp corner as it is effectively blocked off by the soil pipe. Does anyone have any bright ideas on how I can get a bit of channel in there and figure out a way of draining it off into the main length of channel?
Sorry that was such an essay. As I said, this is our first home, and a lovely old house that was left to ruin and needs protecting. The first few months of home ownership has been a bit stressful and i'd be glad of anyone's advice.
Thanks!
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After 5 years (!) of saving for a deposit, my wife and I have just moved into our first home, a 200 yr old cottage which is in need of some TLC.
The first job was to try to sort a bit of damp we have on the inside of the back wall of the house. My initial thought was to drop the level of the back yard, which was quite high, almost up to floor level, and with no DPC.
After spending 3 days smashing up the old patio and sub-base, dropping the ground level by 100mm and carting over 150 bags of rubble to the tip in my car, I bought a load of slate flags and asked a builder to come and lay them. I wanted an ACO drain across the back wall of the house as extra damp protection, so the builder suggested we might as well just slope the patio TOWARDS the house since the water would run off into the ACO drain. This didnt sit too well with me but the logic seems fair enough, but the problem is that the ACO drain doesn't run the full length of the back wall! The builder couldn't figure out how to join in an extra bit of of ACO in the area behind the soil pipe (see photo) as the soil pipe is really in the way, so he just cemented that area in. No big problem so far, but when he put in the long length of ACO, it is sitting too high, about 5mm higher than the flags! Rain water on the patio now runs down towards the house, hits the edge of the ACO drain, and then runs sideways until it pools in the cemented area. This is EXACTLY the area where we have damp on the inside of the house, so what we've ended up with is a patio which very effectively channels water to the exact area we were trying to protect!
I am planning on remedying this situation as we have lost faith in the builder's understanding of the problem (there are other problems with the patio too which I won't go into).
We are going to drop the level of the long run of ACO so that it drains properly, but i'm still not sure how to patch in a bit more ACO in that damp corner as it is effectively blocked off by the soil pipe. Does anyone have any bright ideas on how I can get a bit of channel in there and figure out a way of draining it off into the main length of channel?
Sorry that was such an essay. As I said, this is our first home, and a lovely old house that was left to ruin and needs protecting. The first few months of home ownership has been a bit stressful and i'd be glad of anyone's advice.
Thanks!
View media item 37923 View media item 37924