Hi everyone. New to the group and looking for much needed advice please. Feeling a bit out of our depth.
It's our first time owning an old house.
We have damp that has ingressed from high ground levels.
I've done quite a bit of research into damp and have the Haynes manual for Victorian properties which is very useful and we have a plan. Which I hope is the right way to go.
We moved into our 1893 victorian mid terrace three years ago. Our living room floor suddenly dropped an inch by the front door 2 weeks ago and we took it up to investigate. To our horror, all the joists along the external wall are soaked and rotten. It looks as if they had a previous damp problem and the joosts been replaced a few years ago but were put in touching the exterior brick wall and they hadnt lowered the external grounds.The soil and bricks under the sub floor are wet and there are gaps in the bricks where the mortar has completely gone. We have now lowered the exterior ground level, compacted soil, this week to 150mm below what appears to be a crumbly slate DPC or mud and 150mm below the joists. We have very high foundations and this depth has reached the horizontal brick which i presume is the start of the footings. The ground level was originally just above the slate DPC level.
The problem we have is that when the houses were built there wasn't a foot path in the road and over time the street and footpath outside have got higher than the footings of the house. We are intending to put in a gravel ditch along the wall and line with non woven geotextile fabric. However, our front yard is very small and there is only 3 foot between the house wall and the small wall next to the path. Our ground now that it's been lowered is 1 foot deep from the front pavement wall and we cannot angle a slope away from the house. If we keep the entire level to the right height , it would mean stepping down about a foot from the street, walking 2 spaces, then stepping up a foot into the house.
Does anyone have any advice please?
Can we build the level up beyond the gravel trench to the height of the public path?
We have cleared out the rubbish that was in the subfloor and checked the air brick( we have one) is not blocked. The airbrick is 2 bricks above floor level externally but comes out internally below floor level. Our wall is 12 foot long . We intend to put in 2 more air bricks, clear out all the crumbling soaked mortar and repoint with lime mortar.
Would this be NHL3.5?
Cut out the rotten joists and replace the joists.
Is this the right way to proceed?
We had the usual quotes for injecting a useless damp proof course. As you can see from the pictures it has previously had one wrongly installed above the DPC .
But, unless we fix the source of the moisture, external ground levels, then we won't solve the damp and I'm not sure how to proceed.
It's our first time owning an old house.
We have damp that has ingressed from high ground levels.
I've done quite a bit of research into damp and have the Haynes manual for Victorian properties which is very useful and we have a plan. Which I hope is the right way to go.
We moved into our 1893 victorian mid terrace three years ago. Our living room floor suddenly dropped an inch by the front door 2 weeks ago and we took it up to investigate. To our horror, all the joists along the external wall are soaked and rotten. It looks as if they had a previous damp problem and the joosts been replaced a few years ago but were put in touching the exterior brick wall and they hadnt lowered the external grounds.The soil and bricks under the sub floor are wet and there are gaps in the bricks where the mortar has completely gone. We have now lowered the exterior ground level, compacted soil, this week to 150mm below what appears to be a crumbly slate DPC or mud and 150mm below the joists. We have very high foundations and this depth has reached the horizontal brick which i presume is the start of the footings. The ground level was originally just above the slate DPC level.
The problem we have is that when the houses were built there wasn't a foot path in the road and over time the street and footpath outside have got higher than the footings of the house. We are intending to put in a gravel ditch along the wall and line with non woven geotextile fabric. However, our front yard is very small and there is only 3 foot between the house wall and the small wall next to the path. Our ground now that it's been lowered is 1 foot deep from the front pavement wall and we cannot angle a slope away from the house. If we keep the entire level to the right height , it would mean stepping down about a foot from the street, walking 2 spaces, then stepping up a foot into the house.
Does anyone have any advice please?
Can we build the level up beyond the gravel trench to the height of the public path?
We have cleared out the rubbish that was in the subfloor and checked the air brick( we have one) is not blocked. The airbrick is 2 bricks above floor level externally but comes out internally below floor level. Our wall is 12 foot long . We intend to put in 2 more air bricks, clear out all the crumbling soaked mortar and repoint with lime mortar.
Would this be NHL3.5?
Cut out the rotten joists and replace the joists.
Is this the right way to proceed?
We had the usual quotes for injecting a useless damp proof course. As you can see from the pictures it has previously had one wrongly installed above the DPC .
But, unless we fix the source of the moisture, external ground levels, then we won't solve the damp and I'm not sure how to proceed.