Solid wall buildings part elebenty - alternatives to lath and plaster

[mrcharly-YHT]

Ouch!  That's a wee bit high.

You should try living in the Vale of York.
The ambient RH is often over 70% for weeks on end.

[Mrs Pingu]

It is pretty much close to 70% most of the time at this time of year (and we do live in Aberdeen, not exactly the driest place on earth!), unless I have the dehumidifier on (in the winter) or the door & window open (which is only when it's a-warm enough and b-not so windy it slams the door shut.
I'm not sure I would benefit from a datalogger - I look at the meter every time I come into the room. It drops when I open the windows and it goes back up when we shut them and breathe

The bathroom has an extractor, as does the kitchen although Pingu only uses it when the pasta is actually boiling  .

Once I've got the wall around the stove painted I will see if Pingu will let me get it going

[Aunt Maud]

Count yourself lucky that you don't live in a rotten boarded up shanty like Mrs. A M and the Maudettes.

[Pickled Onion]

Can you move the built up ground away from the wall, or is it too deep ?

Some of it is public footpath, the other side it's not my land, so that's not really possible. I have a woodburner, and enjoy draughts, but given the walls are full of moisture, and the bathroom's next to the sitting room, the humidity goes over 80% without the dehumidifier running in the background.

This shows the layout (click for larger):

[Aunt Maud]

Is that all raised ground around the back ?

[Mrs Pingu]

Woo, there are 2 nice young men with their lead out on my roof.

[Aunt Maud]

Phwaar!

Eeer daaarlin', get yer lead out!

[Mrs Pingu]

Fingers, toes,  flippers and other appendages crossed that this actually sorts it out...

[Feanor]

Is there not some communal responsibility for the roof at the igloo, along with your doonstairs neighbour which might mitigate costs?

[Mrs Pingu]

There is, but after asking for half this and half that etc, etc for all the various works that haven't fixed it again, combined with the fact that he is difficult to get hold of and communicates mostly by text I couldn't face going through it all again.
Cutting off my wallet to spite my face, maybe, but I couldn't handle any more stress than it's already caused me TBH.

[Poly Hive]

Unless specified otherwise in the deeds an Aberdeen tenement roof is a "mutualality" so the other flat carries half the cost.

PH

[Jaded]

If the weather with you is anything like the West Coast the lead and young men will be in the North Sea!

[Aunt Maud]

I think I just saw them blow past.

[Mrs Pingu]

So the original contractor was in yesterday while I was out, inspecting the stained plaster:

It looks to me that there is some kind of staining on the wall within the original plaster. The little square we re-plastered is looking completely differently and the immediate surrounding areas.
The moisture readings in the new patch is also different than it he surrounding areas where as you pointed out the reading is a.very high.

Yup, I told you all that.

I also tested other areas on the walls and I got readings that indicated that all the walls contained dampness.
One area where the readings were very high as well was on the fire board surrounding the stove. The readings there were in the same regions as the readings on the stained area.

Depends on your definition of dampness. I get around 9% reading on most areas, about 12% on the wall with the stain and >25% on the stained patches.
The fireboard hmm.... well, I know that it's not in contact with the wall behind, so it shouldn't be damp transfer, and I also notice that within the space of a few inches where the fireproof plaster transitions to the lime plaster above that the reading suddenly gets lower on the lime plaster. I suspect the difference in readings is down to the different resistance of the 2 construction materials.

I understand from you that the staining is not getting bigger in any way?
It seems to me that the staining is caused by something within the historic fabric (possibly grease/oil of some sort).
If there had been a problem with moisture ingress I would have expected to see the area of the stain increasing and include the small square that got replastered.

Grease or oil??? WTF?

Not once has he mentioned the possibility of hygroscopic salts, either making the plaster damp, or creating a falsely high reading of due to the conductivity of salt. Why the hell do I appear know more about this stuff than he does?
 

[Mrs Pingu]

One other thing I can contribute - one of the studs removed from around the fireplace was wet. I've had this piece wood sitting in our drying loft over the summer where I thought it might dry out enough to burn on the stove. - It hasn't.

I should probably clarify that when I mentioned this I was referring to salts. It's a piece of wood about 2' long. About 6" of one end have always been 'wet' feeling (more salty greasy really). I noticed that in the summer it did start to feel a bit drier but not a lot. Now the days have started to cool down its started to feel greasier and wetter again, which I think would fit with my hygroscopic salt theory.

[Aunt Maud]

Your original contractor should have made a hole large enough to HAVE A BLOODY GOOD LOOK AT THE BACK OF IT.......regardless.

Now he sounds like he's talking out of his behind and is going to bluff his way out of it. It'll eventually turn out to be all your fault, and of course you should have known better. He'll probably end up saying "I told you so, blah, blah, and that when I told so, you also said you didn't want to spend any more money on it when I told you so, like I did tell you so, so much, remember ?". (Standard shonky builder practice).

It's obvious from the state of the roofing work they carried out that he doesn't know his arse from his elbow and is a pants builder. You should take issue with, and point a very sharp and pointy finger at your surveyor, if it was him who recommended the contractor.

And at the end of the day, and if he was any good and gave a damn, he'd take out his tools and cut off the stained plaster, inspect it, repair it and clean up without fuss or further cost to you.

[Mrs Pingu]

Roof is just about finished I think. The slater said it needed 120 new slates,  eek. Oh well, it's only money.

[Aunt Maud]

Lets hope it sorts it all out.

[Aunt Maud]

Desperate measures call for the chainsaw.......



New soleplate in place.....



Nearly finished.....Except I've got to get that timber out under the window on the left now.

[Mrs Pingu]

So this morning a crack has appeared above the stove. Looks like it's around the same place as where the two pieces of fireproof board meet in this photo 

I'm going to have to get the stove guy to rip it all out and replace it with one piece, aren't I?   

IMG_4466 by The Pingus, on Flickr

[mrcharly-YHT]

A crack in the plaster?

I don't think you'll need it all ripping out, but experts may disagree (hopefully more experienced voices will chime in). Some shrinkage over a period of n weeks is normal and I think less drastic fixes are normal (thin washes of weak plaster solution come to mind).

[Aunt Maud]

It's probably just the timber drying out from the heat of the stove.

[Mrs Pingu]

There isn't any wood there.

[Aunt Maud]

What's under the joint then ?

[Mrs Pingu]

What's holding the fibreboard up is,  for want of a better word, meccano.