Fixing a Damp Houses.
I’ve read a few posts about damp houses on the forum and thought I’d tell you about our experience.
Basically the rain came and our house started to get really damp. It’s just about dry now and I thought I’d tell you what we changed to get it that way (some of the things I found really surprised me).
First we found a hole in the roof, never a good thing, but I thought “well that’s the problem get it fixed and all will be well” so we had the roof fixed, we also had it all re-fastened too.
The damp didn’t go away!
I waited for the rain to come again and went round the house looking for any drips coming from the guttering (spouting) found a few, fixed them and cleared the leaves out.
The damp didn’t go away!
I thought, ok we have lots of high plants growing up the walls I’ll get rid of them, maybe the walls are getting wet because the sun doesn’t shine on them. So all the bushes/ high plants were taken down.
The damp didn’t go away!
Sort of clutching at straws now and a little confused about just where the damp was coming from I decided to strip all the flowerbeds that surround the house walls. I thought, “maybe the density of the plants is holding moisture against the walls”.
That’s when I found it! The down pipes (all three) didn’t go anywhere except into the ground. I wouldn’t call it a soak away, no gravel, no holes in the pipe, just a pipe stuck in the ground. (Wouldn’t want a soak away that close to the house either).
Well a bit of pipe to re-route the water (just for now) and the house is dry (YIPPEE).
I learnt this. Here in NZ you can’t put rainwater down the wastewater drain (like you do in the UK) it has to go down the storm drain (the drain in the road).
The difficulty involved in getting the rainwater from the house to a storm drain was enough for the people who built the house to just dump the water into the ground, right next to the walls! Because the houses are single story you obviously have a big roof area, that adds up to a lot of water!
I didn’t suspect this as the cause of the damp (as I said I discovered it quite by accident while removing plants). I spoke to my neighbour and he told me that it was once common to do this and he’d fitted drains to his house too.
I thought I’d post my experience here, you never know, maybe someone else on the forum is suffering a damp house because of the same thing. Relatively easy to fix (if you know its there!!!)
Kind Regards Bob
