old cottage: damp after flood damage. Help!

C

crodaungirl

Guest
I have an old cottage I bought last year as a holiday home. We had a burst pipe and flooding to the sitting room this january. Combined with the cottage not being used and heated daily we now have a damp problem.

The concrete in the floor and floorboards needs to be replaced. The pannelling around the walls has been taken down and we don't want to replace that. Some plaster has come away so the walls will need to be replastered and painted. We would like to do this sympathetically with lime if possible.

We've had an expert come along and look at the house. They recommend removing the external concrete render outside the house as a prioity and rendering with lime as well as installing a french drain, to allow the house to breathe better. Then putting a lime crete floor in the sitting room and flagstones followed by lime plaster for the walls.

I'm afraid this will cost a fortune. Local tradesman can do the work but don't work with lime. So they would just put concrete in the floor in the sitting room and floorboards and no lime for the walls. I'm concerned that if this is done any damp is trapped at ground level, trapped on the internal walls due to impermeable paint and trapped externally due to the ugly concrete render around the outside of the building.

Any advice? Do we really need to remove the concrete render from the outside and replace with lime render? Won't that cost a fortune? Do we need the best experts or should I keep looking for local tradesmen who work with lime? So far I haven't found any in the area. We will get oil put in for next winter to keep the house heated.

How do we manage the damp?

All replies greatly appreciated.
 
Do I really need to remove the concrete render on the external walls to deal with the problem of damp in the long run?
 
I asked a question last January and some of the respondants started arguing among themselves. I just wanted advice.
 
I asked a question last January and some of the respondants started arguing among themselves. I just wanted advice.

If that happens, just use the 'Report Post' facility (little warning triangle icon on the top right of a post) to alert the mods. Taking a discussion to PM defeats the purpose of forums such as AAM.
Leo
 
I agree with Pete. There is no reason why working with lime should be more expensive. However Pete may be overestimating the willingness of Irish tradesmen to try "new" methods (and believe me, lime work is indeed foreign to the vast majority of Irish plasterers and general builders). It's going to be up to you (or your trusted builder) to educate yourself on the value of lime vs concrete and to ram those beliefs home to the workmen you engage. The chances are that the workmen will not understand what you are asking them to understand, but that's OK in one sense, because the vast majority of them could not tell you the advantages of concrete (none that I can think of apart from strength, which is rarely needed) either.

Good luck with it. Been down that road myself, and ended up doing more of the work myself than I wanted to. Hope your experience is better.
 
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