Damp internal wall between kitchen and dining room

[foxhole]

Told you damp company would quote ridiculous price for unnecessary work. Damp chimney would also indicate problems at roof level. You mentioned they used a meter to detect damp, damp in masonry cannot be detected by a meter, requirs a drilled core sample to determine moisture in brickwork.[suggest cowboy damp company].
How have you discounted problems on roof? Facia’s do not prevent damp.
Your video shows no sign of damp below the dpc, just above it.

 

[blup]

Symptoms are not the same as causes, agreed.

However if your priority is to sell the property, and honestly answer any questions raised by the buyers' solicitors (remembering the onus is on the buyer to inspect and raise questions), then you could go ahead with the work quoted ideally with a transferable guarantee and move on.

Not ideal, but your the property's problems will never be fully diagnosed and remedied on these pages.

Blup

 

[Fishwalker]

So the damp patch has been growing over the past few days. I've been penciling the shape and writing the date daily next to it and it grows about 7mm a day.

I did do some wallpapering in the hall 2 rooms away, 4 days ago and it started then. We have the heat exchanging fan in the kitchen pulling air to it.

The size of the patch hadn't changed at all until then.

I guess because the plasters damaged it is attracting the moisture. There's been no rain.

 

[Fishwalker]

Damp patch with dates showing growth. Did wallpapering 4 nights ago using 1 litre of water in paste. Can't think of any other change.

 

[JohnD]

It's a leaking water pipe. Probably at the bottom of the centre of the patch. Can you show us an old photo from your collection, of the place where the patch is? Both sides of the wall please.

If the floor is concrete (not wood) it might be a pipe buried in the floor. Or possibly a pipe passing through the wall under the floor.

It might be a capped-off pipe from something that has been removed in the last 110 years, such as a sink that was put in a different place, or a back boiler. hence my question about the loft...

Do you have water tanks in the loft? How many?

Have you got a water-meter? Have you got an outside stopcock, in the pavement or the garden? Do you know anybody young, with good hearing? This is a serious and important question.

 

[Fishwalker]

I've marked out the tide marks a bit better.

The only thing that had 'possibly' happened is when I've been wallpapering in the hall. The water pipe that is currently capped as the radiator is off for decoration, has got knocked or moved a bit as I painted the skirting etc.

That is connected to the rest of the water pipes that eventually go up the kitchen wall behind the dishwasher on the adjacent external wall to the damp. I'll post an overview shot.

No water tank in the loft. We have a combi boiler in the bathroom above the kitchen. Pipes go from boiler under bath and down to kitchen and then meander to the wall behind the damp's radiator and onward to other radiators.

The system for heating is off and had been for a week and half during hall work.

How to find the leak if it is and repair!

 

[JohnD]

You can find it with the help of the outside stopcock and the young person with good ears. Have you found both those things?

 

[Fishwalker]

Crude red line showing buried pipes in wall above integrated dishwasher coming from boiler upstairs. They travel somehow under the kitchen floor to the radiator etc.

3rd image is hallway with current removed radiator. No leaks noted on any pipes.

 

[JohnD]

You mean the red line shows a pipe passing close to the point where the wet patch is? Hmmmmm.

is it this one?

Can I see something, in the gap under the plaster, about eight inches to the right of the doorframe? Have you got a better pic of this spot? Time to pull off that piece of skirting and chip away the plaster.

 

[Fishwalker]

I have 3 year old but she's in bed .

The stop cock is a switch type next to the internal one, which is inaccessible due to the dishwasher. The outside one is for the block of terraces.

The water mark is growing but not alarmingly as in "help there's a leak!".

 

[JohnD]

The speed of growing will depend on the size of the leak.

Is your 3-year old able to follow the instruction "can you hear a hissing sound? Can you tell where it coming from? Stay here and listen. If the noise stops and starts when I go outside, shout"

If not, you'll need a slightly older one.

Sub-teens that have not been riding motorbikes or listening to heavy metal on headphones, can hear bats squeaking. The white noise of a leak is almost imperceptible, BUT if you listen and have good hearing, you will hear when it stops and starts. Even an adult can hear it with the help of a "listening stick" or an engineer's stethoscope, or a screwdriver held in the teeth and pressed against the pipe.

 

[JohnD]

and if the pipe for this radiator passes through the wall, just next to the wet patch, I'd get on with exposing it. Probably a weeping joint.

Sometimes they start leaking for no reason, sometimes because there has been movement or vibration or something's been touched. I once had one (not one of mine) that started gushing when a hammer and lever was used to take up the floorboard above it. Handy, really.

 

[Fishwalker]

These are pics I have before our kitchen coverup and the leak when the radiator on the other side of the affected wall was taken off.

I can't believe the state of the walls but hey... that's been heavily pregnant at the time and listening to my other half, who said it was all fine or else I'd have had all the plaster hacked off!

The last ones shows old messed up pipe work and new more orderly behind dishwasher by our good plumber.

Will have to turn fridge freezer off to have any chance of hearing a leak.

Oh and the one with blue pipe running under the step was a decommissioned gas pipe now gone. Water pipes run under floor boards.

 

[JohnD]

somehow I missed your video on page 1 yesterday.

But with the water appearing on an internal wall, localised, next to those pipes, I still think it's a leak. Couldn't see it on the hall side, so I suppose on the kitchen side, probably under the floor, though the wet line seems to continue at floor level under the doorstep.

If it is, then damproofing injections are the wrong remedy.

 

[arkie]

Unless its just rained these pipes seem to be flooding the place, But in any case they need to point down.


I would also agree its a leaking radiator pipe being the main course of the rotting wood here, you need both skirting boards off.