Apart from a bit of mould here & there, there is this one outside corner of a downstairs room with dampness. The previous owner has removed plaster & polyfilla'd in before using polystyrene under the wallpaper which has fallen off anyway. Walls are solid brick, (ot plaster boarded downstairs at all, only upstairs) and there has been damp course treatment all round with plastic plugs inserted. On the dampest wall (which gets all the weather) it looks like it has had the treatment a second time as there are more plug holes. I have been chipping off the loose exterior paint & spalled brick faces, treating with stabilser with a view to making good & repainting.
About 10" up the wall there has been used some bitumastic type substance which seems to me like it is keep moisture in below the DPC as the brickwork revealed where it is coming off in huge lumps is soggy & full of woodlice!

So my questions are:
1 What should I use where the 'orrible black stuff is? Something breathable or water resistant?
2 Should I do something about the big cracks between the walls & concrete paths butting up, maybe to stop rainwater going down there off the walls?
3 After stabilising the spalled bricks and repairing, should I (after it has all dried) put stabiliser over that or just exterior paint?
4 Is it rising damp coming in & is the DPC breached by the exterior treatment?

thanks

Les
(new to this owning an older house malarky!)

Hi Les,



First thing I'd be looking at would be that drain........do you know where it goes, what it is connected too, if it's unblocked and freeflowing?

I've seen many a bodge where all looks good on the surface, but the pipe is not conencted to anything. With the age of your property, it's likely to have clay drains....perhaps a broken drain is soaking the ground?

Have you tried to dig the soil, see if it's sodden?

Cheers,

BG

Sorry, that photo is a bit misleading, that's another corner with that crumbly hardened bitumastic stuff. There is no downpipe on the corner where the dampness inside is, and the corner in question does not have the worst spalling, etc. House surrounded by concrete gutter & modern cobbles set in sand. Downpipes believed to go into soakaways or, according to survey, the septic tank.