Mid-January took me to the lovely little village of North Kyme in Lincolnshire, with a population of under 500, it was a lovely rural setting.
The property had no passive ventilation to the roofspace and the moisture rising up through the house was collecting on the back of the felt and causing condensation problems and a light spattering of white roof mould on
the timbers. As water has a lighter atmospheric weight than air, it will always rise up to the top of the house and in many cases, will collect in the roofspace if there is inadequate ventilation.
Thankfully, the solution is quite cheap and simple, increase the passive ventilation to the roofspace and the atmospheric conditions will manage themselves.
The ground floor slab had been coated in a thick layer of bitumen to act as a damp proof course. Whilst this can be effective in preventing moisture from rising up in the room, it does cause it to be forced out to the perimeter, where, if it cannot evaporate, it will get driven up into the walls. This can be particularly problematic around redundant chimney breasts where the moisture gets driven into the base of the chimney breast and dissolves impurities. When this moisture finds somewhere to evaporate, it leaves the impurities behind on the surface. As these are hydroscopic, they attract more moisture out of the atmosphere and start a vicious cycle. There are several things that can be done to improve this situation, however, the only way to provide a permanent solution is to break up the slab and replace this with limecrete and improved heating and ventilation.
The outside of the property was painted in several layers of modern plastic-based paint and textured surface coatings. These significantly reduce the permeability of the walls and trap moisture behind the paint which accelerates the decay of the masonry. The tar/bitumen around the lower sections of the house is particularly bad for this and difficult to properly remove without specialist equipment.
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