Hello, I have an old stone house, which also has a whitewashed stone ground floor interior, i.e. no render. The house is on a slope, the cellar walls at the front and one side of the house are fully underground, and have a render in parts, although this is in a fairly bad state, the other two are not underground at all - i.e. are external walls of the house, and these are just exposed stone with no render.
I was intending to hack off the render in the cellar as it is not in a particularly good state, expose the stone walls that are not already exposed, and then whitewash the cellar. However, it occurred to me that this render might be some sort of a damp proof course, which is holding back floods of water! Which brings me onto my first question: how would I be able to tell if it is a DPC?
Second question, would it be a good idea to get rid of this render even if it is a (damaged) DPC because it would allow the walls to 'breathe' and thus allow any damp to evaporate in the cellar (particularly if I renew the lime mortar), preventing it from rising to ground floor level (there is some small evidence of damp at ground floor level in parts, but as the ground floor walls are whitewashed exposed stone it's not really a big deal)? Or should I leave the render in place? Or should I get a new DPC??? As you can see I'm a bit confused, particularly having read some posts that tell me that old houses shouldn't have DPCs etc.
For information, until recently there was no through airflow down there, with the only ventilation being a fireplace; i recently unblocked the window (on the underground wall opposite the fireplace) so hopefully this should help any damp problem?
Cheers
I was intending to hack off the render in the cellar as it is not in a particularly good state, expose the stone walls that are not already exposed, and then whitewash the cellar. However, it occurred to me that this render might be some sort of a damp proof course, which is holding back floods of water! Which brings me onto my first question: how would I be able to tell if it is a DPC?
Second question, would it be a good idea to get rid of this render even if it is a (damaged) DPC because it would allow the walls to 'breathe' and thus allow any damp to evaporate in the cellar (particularly if I renew the lime mortar), preventing it from rising to ground floor level (there is some small evidence of damp at ground floor level in parts, but as the ground floor walls are whitewashed exposed stone it's not really a big deal)? Or should I leave the render in place? Or should I get a new DPC??? As you can see I'm a bit confused, particularly having read some posts that tell me that old houses shouldn't have DPCs etc.
For information, until recently there was no through airflow down there, with the only ventilation being a fireplace; i recently unblocked the window (on the underground wall opposite the fireplace) so hopefully this should help any damp problem?
Cheers