hello all, ive recently bought an old property a good few months ago now and ive recently noticed an air brick by the front door which looks to me to be below the damp course, im no expert in dam courses but this can not be right as the room behind the wall smells damp

also theres a smaller air brick at the botttom of the bay window of the same room which has been set in the wall along some sort of troff thats been put in to obviously carry rain water passed but why on earth put an air brick so close!? i mean the water, if we have bad rain, must be leaking into the house

does anybody have an idea of where i need to start to solve this problem?

(im attaching pictures below...)

Hi,

Basically they are there to vent the hollow floor,
you have a couple of problems here, not big problems
1. your path is quite high with regards to the dpc and air bricks basically i would chop out around the air brick and dig down about 300mm then fill with shingle upto about 150mm below the bottom of the air brick, if you are upto it you could do this all the way around your house ie dig out a trench about 300m wide and about 300mm deep then fill with shingle upto 150mm below the dpc
2. i would move the downpipe and if possible dig a trench and pipe it up to a soakaway to carry the water away from the house

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If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments..

Basically what has happend is that a previous owner has gone mad and laid concrete everywhere, without thinking it through.

As leebwq writes, you need to break up and remove the concrete all round the house and lower the area within one foot of the walls by at least a foot, then add small clean stones to a level not more than six inches below the dpc, this will stop the rain from bouncing and making the walls above the damp proof course wetter than otherwise.

The concrete should have been laid with a slope to make the rain water flow away from the house.

Those air vents need to be cleaned and the holes opened up.

There should be air vents on oposite sides of the house to enable the passing wind to suck air under the floor, to help keep the joists dry.

Are you sure there's not a gully in the curb. It would be an idea to clean it out and check.

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