Tanking, Dot and Dab Walls

[Mak12345678]

I've followed the lime vs tanking debate carefully and it seems there are proponents of both systems. My personal experiece is a 1800 house made from a very porous stone and lime mortar with various 'repairs' with cement on various parts of the house. One room was bad and it was the interior walls that were worse despite the exterior being cement pointed ontop of lime. Floor had been DPC membraned beneath a shellac wood floor since sanded back and recoated. The solution I chose was 1m from floor tank and replaster and I can say 6years hence I'm very happy with the result. Perhaps it will take long to 'fail' but ther room has been bone dry compared with the 'breathable' corridor outside. Not that it's that bad just that it gets rising damp in heavy rain (house built on clay). Another area was a gutter problem which kept a wall wet and leaked inside at celing level. Fix gutter, big improvement, and then used a brushed on silcone which I did as an immediate quick repair. This has stop the spalling and the wall gettting wet and as a result I've not bothered following up with further repairs. Several other issues which were dealt with by fixing the roof and soffit/fascias/felt. These were largely caused by that part of ther roof being to shallow for loose roman tiles but hey ho I can't easily make the pitch steeper without huge expense. Current issue is an outbuilding that has damp lime walls which do dry quickly but if as I do, I want a modern plastered interior then the same issues present. I think I'm going to repoint the exterior wall with lime and then tank ther inside. Imho best of both worlds, exterior can breathe, interior can stay dry. As abpve puts it 'it can be contained' and perhaps alot easier than curing the problem completely. Another issue I've had is finding an expert with lime mortar with enough time to take on the work! Hence I'll probably use the simpler tanking solution myself. PS I've been using a mortar rake on an angle grinded with a vaccum that is great. really quick and keeps the dust down, demo on youtube if you want to copy.