brick treatment needed

[laurastar]

does anyone have a recommendation for a good brick specialist or small jobs builder? We have a very damp external wall on the side of our house and we need it treated with a sealant to prevent further water ingress.

Thanks

[MrBen]

Hi Laurastar,

Just been through this. I don't have a guy I can recommend but could share some advice.

First thing you really need to do is to actually sort the source of the damp - ours was a leaking gutter and broken downpipes at roof level causing rain water to run down the wall each time it rained hard. Bricks are porous and so after a good soaking they can stay damp for a long time - weeks or 2-3 months after a bad winter. Brick walls usually "breathe" through the mortar, but if the wrong type of mortar has been used e.g cement rather than lime mortar then the water stays put and has nowhere to go but to leach into your internal plaster walls (if they are Victorian, single skin walls with no cavity ventilation).

We also had cement used throughout the exterior of the building and weren't about to repoint the whole building in a hurry?so we fixed the drainpipe and gutter issues, filled any small holes in the brickwork and around window frames/sills (with lime mortar) and then stripped back our internal bedroom wall that had been affected by damp, hacked it all off back to the brickwork and applied Sika render (http://gbr.sika.com/en/solutions_products/02/02a024/02a024sa02.html), let it dry, then a finishing layer of plaster, let it all dry then decorated and it has worked a treat.

[laurastar]

Thanks so much MrBen. We too had broken guttering - which has now (finally) been fixed - but we wondered if the water was getting in via the brickwork by some other means as well (since the damp was very bad.) Perhaps we'll let it dry out a bit and render the inside!

Thanks for the tip.

[MrBen]

Chances are it's still damp from the original problem. Ours tool 6 months Inc a summer to dry out but you can expedite that by using a dehumidifier which you can hire from HSS easily or by hacking off the plaster to the bricks and leaving it a few weeks with the heating on...before you start the work. Either way it can be sorted.