What’s causing this?

This room was professionally decorated with decent paint a year ago.

please could someone explain why it’s flaking off on the chimney breast. At the time of painting the decorator kept rubbing it off and starting again only in this small patch. This stuck, but only for a few months. 

Excessive heat and / or damp ingress.

Heat from the fire?

Is it old plaster? If so, has it been contaminated in the past with tar/smoke/anything from the fire, so it’s now ‘greasy’ and the paint won’t stick?

Did the previous paint flake off as well, or just the new stuff?

IANADecorator

Is it the spot where you bang your head against the wall after reading the political threads on STW?

Or NBT’s head? *smiley*

Is that tutankhamun’s coffin to the right?

In which case it’s the curse of the mummy. Quite common apparently.

In the unlikely event it’s not the curse, it’ll probably be damp from the chimney or possibly an ingress of salts from the chimney ie basically damp.

Is the chimney in use or open? There could be a blockage at that point that is spanning the flue and transmitting damp through. Is your chimney pot open to the sky?

Was going say it must be heat or damp in the underlying surface.

If you use the fire as an open fire I’d guess excess heat from the chimney stack.

If not it might be damp coming down from the chimney pot.. Does it have one of those plastic cap things on the top of it that allows ventilation but stops rain and birds getting down the chimney?

Have you sent a young Victorian boy up it to clean the soot recently? Might need cleaning out properly or otherwise protected by a heat shield or something inside the chimney flue?

What’s underneath? What’s the wall made of? If it’s old lime plaster like wot we have then it needs special breathable paint, although saying that I still wouldn’t expect to see flaking that bad after just 1 year.

Contaminated surface that was painted over.

Probably something seeping through the underlying plaster.

Possibly damp being heated by the fire and steamed out through the more porous area that is flaky.

Unlikely to be honey badgers.

Unlikely to be honey badgers.

Too early to rule out id say

The log burner hasn’t been used for about 2 years. The next door neighbour’s log burner is probably on now even though it’s October (their chimney is on the other side).

We had the chimney pot re-pointed about 18 months ago. I’m not sure about the covering, but it’s strange that the paint is only coming off at this one point. This wall was re-plastered 16 years ago.

Blimey never realised that the sides of the mirror do indeed look like sarcophagi :O)

Edit: could it be honey and badgers?

At the time of painting the decorator kept rubbing it off and starting again only in this small patch.

That sounds like it was greasy. Decorator was aware of this… Shoulda used some sort of primer instead of just slapping the paint on and hoping for the best.

Is the log burner vent closed? If so there may not be enough ventilation. Is it a standard open chimney or has it been lined? Is there a cover on the chimney pot?

could it be honey and badgers?

The chances of honey badgers are low, but never zero…

The log burner hasn’t been used for about 2 years.

Damp in the fireplace, possibly because of this ^

Or greasy (but why just there?)

The log burner was fitted with a full liner. We’ve had it professionally cleaned (except the last 2 years when it hasn’t been used). As mentioned before, I don’t know what is covering the pot. Will try and find out later.

Can the paint be rubbed off,  primed and re-painted? Before we had decorated ourselves with no problem.

I don’t want to wee in the decorators shoes as he’s a nice chap and he’s done a great job in another small room (no chimney or honey badgers).

On an unrelated note, can anyone help? I appear to be trapped in some kind of brick enclosure, have been banging at a weak spot to try and get out for ages…

^^^^This wins the interweb today

The log burner was fitted with a full liner.

Hmm, that might be the issue then – you now essentially have a void between the existing chimney and the liner and, as you are not using the log-burner at all, any damp in there is just stuck.

Our pot is on the left. 

Is that tutankhamun’s coffin to the right?

In which case it’s the curse of the mummy. Quite common apparently

Seriously, don’t poke fun at this. It’s no laughing matter. There was a curse placed on Tutenkahamun’s tomb, which would afflict anyone who dared to open it. This was ignored at your peril! Howard Carter and his team chose to mock it, just like you, but you know what? Every single member of that team is now dead.

If it is damp there are several ways in, cracked haunching is possible – the mortar hump around the base of the chimney pot. Rain could potentially run down the outside of the liner.

Was the haunch done same time as pointing?

Chimney has a chinamans hat on, which is good but they can corrode surprisingly quickly and perforate. However that would allow water into the liner, which would then enter the stove, not reach the wall. So less likely, and the stove would be wet inside

It looks like a pot hanging cowl which means water can’t realistically get under the cowl and into the masonry flue under the lip, as liner and cowl are joined. I have seen incorrectly installed cowls where water could just get in, but it’s really unlikely and would mean cowl and liner weren’t connected

Was the wall painted previously, or papered? Ie could there have historically been a damp patch there which was masked, and then a change of decor revealed it?

Personally I’d ask the painter guy what he thinks, no finger pointing. And ask him what would be the best thing to do.

Incidentally, have you looked behind the coffin to see what the wall is like there?

What’s underneath?

I notice @nbt hasn’t commented yet…makes you think…

Pointing looks shot on your neighbour’s side of the stack. Also is there moss on their side of the haunching? Water doesn’t care about property boundaries and will happily run from their side to yours and down the stack.

when it was lined did you just have a steel liner fitted, or was it thermocreted with a big balloon thing?

I have a similar damp patch on the chimney breast, slightly off centre.  Some people say it’s rain coming in down chimney, it’s adjoins a flat roof outside.

Anyway, chap came today to service gas fire underneath.  He reckoned if it was simply rain coming down chimney the fire would show signs of rust, there aren’t any.  So it’s from the flat roof/ chimney breast joint.

Solution is fix the damp ingress, then repair damp patch.

honeybadgerxFull Member
On an unrelated note, can anyone help? I appear to be trapped in some kind of brick enclosure, have been banging at a weak spot to try and get out for ages…

Thank you so much for this, it’s made me really laugh out loud (covid has hit bunnyhop towers) which was much needed.

hot_fiat, I can’t remember what liner was used, but the company had been going for years and knew their stuff (not just jumping on the fact log burners were becoming really popular). Yes the neighbours haven’t had their house/chimney repointed, hardly ever have the sweep round and don’t care about our property in the slightest, only if it affected them.

I will get the decorator round and see what he thinks.

Thanks all.

Id get your stove dude to check the pot and stack 1st

I would suspect damp  – I would see if you can borrow a damp meter and see what it says, with water ingress running down the inside of the chimney a possible cause. Not using the stove and the wet summer are likely contributory factors.

A steel liner is likely to have cut off any ventilation inside the stack, so if water gets in, it’ll have no place to go.

it might be a bitter pill, but you may need to just fix their side of the chimney

I repointed one in one of my old houses and was surprised how utterly shagged chimney mortar becomes over a hundred years of heat cycling.  My simple repointing job ended up with me dismantling the chimney from inside the loft and rebuilding it.

Blimey never realised that the sides of the mirror do indeed look like sarcophagi :O)

I had a thought that it was a gilt framed painting of nbt and bunnyhop, like a royal painting….

Our pot is on the left.

Is that cloud always there too?

Could be causing the damp.

Don’t paranormal entities leave damp patches?

honeybadgerxFull Member
On an unrelated note, can anyone help? I appear to be trapped in some kind of brick enclosure, have been banging at a weak spot to try and get out for ages…

That made me laugh out loud, I hope next door couldn’t hear me, although the walls are 1930’s council house, and pretty solid, so unlikely. Very funny, though.

Been thinking about this as we’ve done/had a lot of decoration done recently after a massive extension. There was a lot of moisture in the walls as we had a lot of rain during the build plus of course plaster drying etc etc. Anyway, this manifested itself as discolouration of the paint as the moisture came through, not cracking/peeling. In fact I’m struggling to think of any time I’ve seen interior paint peel due to damp? Seems odd to me. I suppose it can happen if the paint gets damp and then dries quickly, but it still seems odd.

I mention interior paint, as we did get a little patch of cracking/peeling similar to yours on the old exterior where we’d used ‘WEBERSIL P – Solvent-free, Water-based Silicone Paint’ (for colour match reasons with the new monocouche). Anyway, obviously they make all sorts of claims for the paint, but either way it’s not your standard emulsion. The affected area was just below the boiler vent, so could be heat or a bit of damp I suppose but it did look similar.

Now, I know that doesn’t help much…but I’d be looking at the paint used too personally.

It’s not something simple like that part of the wall having previously been painted with a paint that is incompatible with the later paint?

We had problems like this with our kitchen ceilling and had to clean it all off and PVA the ceilling.

What was the reason for PVA before paint ?

Someone I forget who suggested it. I am struggling to remember  why but it worked.

I just google and its supposed to seal the surface but like everything on the Internet some people think it doesn’t work.

What kind of construction is the wall? Brick or stone with gypsum plaster? Lime plaster? Or plasterboard with a skim?

What can you see behind the peeled paint? Does it appear dry/dusty? Wet? Mouldy? Salt deposits on the surface?

The wall is brick construction, gypsum plaster (which the guy didn’t apply very well and had to come back – maybe that’s the reason). Paint is National Trust’s Little Greene. The area feels bone dry to me.

When the decorator applied the paint, it didn’t take well in that one area. He came back the next morning and kept rubbing off and applying the paint, this went on for about 20 -30 mins. After that the paint stuck, until a few months ago when tiny cracks appeared and the paint started to peel. This has not got worse. It’s been like the photo above for about 3 months.

We’ve still got some of the paint, but I’m not confident of peeling off, rubbing and re-applying.

The rest of the room is great.