Leaks & Damp

MrCake

MrCake

MrCake

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Joined
22 Sep 2003
Posts
704
Location
South Coast UK
Has anyone had any experience with damps and physical water ingress in their properties?

During strong winds and rain we have water coming through a lintel in the living room. I believe the lintel could have a crack (several curtain pole holes) but wondered how it is actually getting through to the inner walls? Should a lintel have some kind of DPC?

We also have a damp patch which has appeared near the bottom of this same window but this thread is more about if anyone has suffered anything and how they actually got this diagnosed and repaired.

Unfortunately our house has UVPC cladding covering most of the property so we are unsure how to proceed and who to get involved.

I have found damp surveyors but am not convinced that they are properly equipped to deal with tracing the lintel leak. Equally there are leak detection companies which are fairly expensive but most of their work seems to be aimed at leaking water pipes and mention nothing about damp!?
 
I have this problem in my dining room and did a fair amount of research. The bad news is that it could be caused by a number of things:

  • Loose tiles/lack of sealing at edge of roof allowing water to enter the cavity
  • Damage to upstairs window openings allowing water into cavity
  • Damage to external render/cladding allowing water to ingress through brickwork
  • Holes in walls for cables etc

If water gets into the cavity it runs down inside until it hits something solid (the lintel) and runs along that either inside or outside the house. Houses are now built with cavity trays to stop this.
 
How old is the house.
Dow you know whether the cladding is a existing over brick/ block wall, or over timber frame?

Gutters overflowing & allowing water to run down behind the cladding & in to the cavity, could be another 101 things.
 
The house is mid 1970's and I believe that the cladding is over brick. I don't think the guttering is an issue as the pitch of the roof dictates that the guttering is on either side of the property rather than front and back.
 
My guess would be that water is getting in through perished seals of a window above (if there is one).

Usually a lintel would allow water to drain to the outside through weep holes. But with it being cladded over, the weep holes could be blocked.
 
We had the windows replaced a few years ago as the problem existed back then although not to the degree we have now. We have also had a couple of people check all of the cladding and fill any obvious ingress points.

So having already thrown quite a bit of money at the problem we are not sure where to turn next?

Some good looking suggestions on here but it sounds like we are going to need to strip back the cladding :(

Does anyone know when lintel cavity trays became standard build practice?

I believe the house does have cavity insulation but only because there looks to be bore holes in the brick but we could not find anything to suggest it has definitely been done in the house paperwork. There is no air brick either which I know now is standard practice.
 
MrCake said:
Does anyone know when lintel cavity trays became standard build practice?
Click to expand...


That's a good question, cavity tray was around from 1920's made from lead, copper,bitumen sheet, the preformed cavity tray no idea, remember them early 80's, can remember using concrete boot lintels before that.

Your cavity tray I wouldn't think it's plastic preformed one, has been incorrectly fitted, or dpc missing,failed, the cavity is bridged, even wall ties fitted wrongly.

A bit drastic removing the cladding, there are firms who do cavity inspection with a camera,but you can do it yourself & hire the Recordable Inspection Camera from Speedy hire centres, would think other hire firms do them as well.
You save any images to your PC via the SD memory card

Just need to drill a series of about 13mm holes along in the inside wall where you have the problem.

Used one in the past, it saved me a lot of unnecessary work opening up a wall, by pinpointing the problem to just one small area.

http://www.speedyservices.com/24_5635-h-milwaukee-c12lcavd-21-recordable-inspection-camera
 
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