… and how I solved it with not a little help from STW.

Fix your guttering. If water is coming down your exterior walls you’ll have issues. Look at where the water comes out of the downpipe – if it’s right next to the damp wall, you’ll have issues. Maybe extend the pipe to direct the water away from your house. Seal any gaps around double glazed units. Perhaps look at your pointing. Dig a French drain around affected walls (4″ trench about a foot deep, filled with gravel. If it’s serious, dig trenches away from your drain into the garden. If it’s *very* serious, consider soakaways (big wire baskets of rocks and gravel buried at the end of garden trenches) ).

Ventilation – open the doors when the sun shines – let air pass through the house. Don’t dry your washing on radiators.

Whatever you do, don’t allow any dry course charlatans to cross your portals.

Thank you STW, peace out.

Obvs, all common sense but when your plaster’s coming away in strips and your whole family is coughing, you call in the “experts” and they’ll empty your bank balance in a snap and leave you sitting in a puddle. Fortunately, I had you lot, a modicum of common sense and a friendly tradesman with arms the size of my neck.

Well done good advice I remember this thread. I am having a bathroom refurbished and the builders mixed in a sika waterproofing liquid in with the cement to give an extra protection. When dry they paint this liquid on again any potentially damp surfaces.

Glad you got it sorted

well done – do you think stw have the knowledge to solve the problem of having a spring in our basement?

Basement damp – been there!

One, we paid the professional company in to fully tank the room and create extra living space. As the house was on a hill in Sheffield, they simply dug down under the lowest corner of the cellar and foundations, inserted a drain pipe under wall. They then created a ‘herring bone’ arrangement of hidden french drains indoors, on top of which went the concrete slab and DPC. Externally, I then dug down to the hidden pipe and extended it out onto the end of the short path (the only place it could go) – all you could see was the end of a pipe at the base of a small retaining wall, that dripped out into pavement drain. It worked a treat.

Next house was on flatter ground, but I did the conversion. Similar approach to life – I sorted gutters and soakaways next to the house (they soaked into the cellar…), then added a ‘sump’ in the middle of the herring bone of drains, small hose pipe out to the kitchen grey water drain in the garden. I added a sump pump and float switch. I paused with just the DPC and concrete slab down, three walls dried within 6 months or so, and when I finished the tanking to sell the house, the pump seemed to kick in about once a day to remove a few litres of water that had gathered. It changed it from a cellar that had puddles in to a mildly damp cellar (the wet wall from next door clearly was a source of *lots* of the moisture, from their two soakaways for gutters I think).

HTH

Hmm interesting – ours is more like a 4ft crawl space than basement, but in a wet year did have an actual spring in it, fortunately neighbour (now moved) installed a pump, but flow rates were considerably more – like hundreds of litres an hour 🙁

m_o, sounds like great work. Do you have any more details, photos etc. Would be a really good pair of case studies to share info about.

I am not sure if I have any pics – will look up tonight.

Some here give an idea of how – https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cellar+sump+pump&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfrMzt4ITQAhUIIsAKHa2DAfAQ_AUICSgC&biw=1252&bih=604

winter is approaching, this really is great news for damp houses – honestly!

cold air is dry air, so every day, or every other day, open lots of doors and windows for a few minutes – i usually leave it till MsWife starts shouting at me:

“Why the ****ing ****-balls are all the ****ing windows open!!!” – or words to that effect.

the cold air that’s now filled your house will quickly warm up, as it does so it’s ability to hold water will increase dramatically – litres worth of water will be absorbed by this new air in just a few hours. just open all the windows to let it out…