Damp wall

[Richard Faulkner]

What you should do is lower the outside level to well below your floor/joists, then inject in the 3rd brick above the new level.

[Toby]

More of a spring job than a winter one but not too arduous. You'd be surprised how thin the concrete turns out to be, maybe only 1" over rubble, especially if it is an old house. Like Niel says a 6" from the wall is good, the depth is dependant on your own circumstances. An angle grinder won't go through the whole thickness but will provide a score line which will encourage the concrete to crack along it. USe a variety of hammers, drills, chisels, picks, levers etc to create the channel.

New houses with paving around them often have a deep fill of pea shingle or gravel around the walls.

[N. Thornton]

coarse

It is. You need indirectly vented goggles, tough gloves, and prefrerably tough boots, thats all. Scrwefix sell 9" angle grinders for what, £29? And treat with care :)

If you know the concretes only 1" thick even a 4" angle grinder would do.

I'm not clear why 0.5m was suggested. As far as I can see all you need is to keep the stuff off the wall and allow a bit of drainage, so 6" should do it.

Hopefully the concrete is sloped very fractionally away from the house, as it ought to be.

1. You dont need to do 10m2
2. You probably dont need drains, but I dont have the knowledge on that.
3. rubble sacks were made for carting junk through houses.
4. What else are you going to do?

You could try lifting the floor if wood, injecting every brick upto 6" above ground, and injecting the floor if concrete, but it may or may not work. I wouldnt be too confident.

The absolute minimum you could do would be to use a dehumidifier. Drying the air will increase the rate at which the wall dries off. Theres a chance that might make things passable.

Regards, NT

[JK]

OK, Thanks to everyone for some really helpful advice. I'm coming round to the idea of cutting a trench and then maybe injecting if that doesn't solve it. I already have a small angle grinder so I guess I need to stop being so wussy. Something to do over christmas anyway!

Thanks again,

John

[The Natural Philosopher]

The thinh youi need for most concrete is indeed a specialised form of angle grinder. I hired one some time ago to cut therough a concrete path and install underground incoming mains cable.

I hired it and its 110V trnsformner for a couple of days. It tookk me finally once i got teh hang of it about 2 hours to cut a 4 ft long section out of 4-6" thick concrete. No way an anggle grinder of the hobby variety would do that.

No special safety equipment is needed apart from some eye protection. I wera glasses thes days anyway and they were enough.

[Witchy]

And most importantly, remember to think of people you don't like as you're doing the hammering :o))

When I was knocking the bathroom into an adjacent bedroom I made the job much more pleasurable by picturing all the managers at work that were making my life hell!

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs