Advice on Survey results

What is his justification for saying lower the ground level by two courses? Is he saying that there is a DPC membrane at this level which has been bypassed by the surrounding ground? If so then thats fine. Maybe the base foundations are engineering brick or similar and he would like to see the ground at that level as they are less permeable? It doesnt sound like a big issue to me..

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How far above the ground is the physical damp proof course - slate / membrane / engineering brick?

If you have to dig the ground down, you could always dig a french drain

- about 6" wide with some gravel in the bottom

He could be being hipercritical - he could also have missed other causes such as overflowing gutters / leaking downpipes

Charlie

If your house is damp, you need to find the source of the damp and rectify it - not just add an extra barrier (chemical damp proofing).

Digging away the exterior ground to well below the level of the damp course sounds like good advice - usually surveyors recommend the chemical damp treatment without looking at the source of damp.

However we can't possibly know if that is right for your house.

damp problems are frequently false positive identified, so the first question is does your house have a damp problem? This is not determined by a socalled dampmeter (which dont measure dampness) but rather by seeing if it has any of the symptoms of a damp problem. A pair of eyes is all thats needed for that.

NT

If the ground level is bridging the damp course then it only needs to be a small trench (about 1'x1' cross-section) round the property. Preferably filled with gravel and draining somewhere. You don't have to call out Sir Robert McAlpine or the Royal Engineers.

If, indeed, it's needed.

Owain

The dampcourse is supposed to be at your inside floor level. The outside floor level is supposed to be a minimum of 150mm (6 inches) below this, IE you need to be able to step down to outside, it's so that water cant come under your doors during a light rainfall, also 'splashback' from when rain falls causes more damp than actual rain hitting the brickwork, I'd be surpised if any surveyor missed this, so it needs to be done, the good news is that it's not a massive job, so you can get those visions of JCB's tearing the gardens to shreds out of your mind! - it only needs to be like this near the house - I've seen gardens that are two feet higher than the back door step. any parts that are soil directly up to the house, borders and flowerbeds etc are obviously the easiest to tackle and they just require a 200mm trench about a spade's width diging along each wall, you can stand bricks against the soil edge to stop it falling back in and put a few spadefuls of gravel in the bottom to make it look more presentable, this will give you your

Yes the final result will be a 150mm trench all around the house but it's the only way it will sell, and if you don't pay for it now, it will come out of the price of the house

Thanks for all the input guys, greatly appreciated and put my mind at rest. It was the visions of a torn up drive/pathway that were scaring me, I naively wasn't aware a simple gravel channel was all that was required....phew....just hope my buyer's mind can rest now :)

Many thanks again, S

Bob wrote: snip

As an aside Bob, can I ask you if you cancelled your original post from the server? -it dissapeared off my screen within minutes of me replying to it, although I think my PC is playing up.

I didn't, no Phil. I've just pulled the headers down on a different PC an it's still there too. Your comp or news server perhaps??

Thanks for that, I think it's the PC...I also highlighted the thread but several of the replies stayed black instead of going red as they should have done. I think there's something afoot with outlook express, or the memory it's allocated maybe, cheers.