I bought a mid terrace Victorian house about a year ago. It seems the previous owners indulged themselves in a significant amount of bodge work.
An area in the center of the house has been showing damp since I moved, which has progressively got worse (images attached). The damp appears to track mainly along corners, beading and dado rails, only starting from about 1m from the floor. I removed one of the recently installed light switches as it was starting to rust and tested the brickwork behind with a damp meter, which showed it as damp.
Both damp walls are supporting the stairs in the center of the house and there is a damp musty smell under the stairs. There is very little sub-floor ventilation as the brickwork is sat directly on the soil below. Strangely, it looks like half of one of the walls has a DPC (possibly a result of repair works to the wall when the bottom couple of stairs were replaced).
I have removed a couple of floor boards from upstairs directly above to check for any leaking pipes and everything seemed dry.
Is it possible that the damp could be rising up the brickwork, then exposing itself where it can find a gap in the render (like the light switch)?
I had a damp specialist in who recommended re-rendering and plastering, which I didn't think would fix the root cause of the problem. Any advise would be much appreciated.
An area in the center of the house has been showing damp since I moved, which has progressively got worse (images attached). The damp appears to track mainly along corners, beading and dado rails, only starting from about 1m from the floor. I removed one of the recently installed light switches as it was starting to rust and tested the brickwork behind with a damp meter, which showed it as damp.
Both damp walls are supporting the stairs in the center of the house and there is a damp musty smell under the stairs. There is very little sub-floor ventilation as the brickwork is sat directly on the soil below. Strangely, it looks like half of one of the walls has a DPC (possibly a result of repair works to the wall when the bottom couple of stairs were replaced).
I have removed a couple of floor boards from upstairs directly above to check for any leaking pipes and everything seemed dry.
Is it possible that the damp could be rising up the brickwork, then exposing itself where it can find a gap in the render (like the light switch)?
I had a damp specialist in who recommended re-rendering and plastering, which I didn't think would fix the root cause of the problem. Any advise would be much appreciated.
![InkedIMG_0772[34236]_LI.jpg](https://dev-www.diynot.com/diy/data/attachments/256/256458-2be85c67a4057eda972b5435ab3e6993.jpg?hash=K-hcZ6QFft)
