DIYbanter - View Single Post - Silocone injection damp proofing effective?

(Jake) wrote in message ...
On 11 Nov 2004 04:58:06 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

Whether its enough on its own, who knows, only one way to see, but
certainly it'll help. IIRC your walls are covered on the interior with
some kind of waterproof paint or something, this wants removing
really. Gypsum plaster and emulsion all considerably reduce
evaporation, thus increasing damp in the wall. The standard proper fix
is to remove plaster and replaster in lime. Lime is porous, and
greatly improves the drying.

But it's very absorbent too - so that is sort of contrary to the usual
advice about plastering with sand & cement mortar to block the flow of
moisture to the interior wall surface, yes?

Its contradictory to that popular poor advice, obviously. The idea is
to dry the wall out, not trap the water in it. If you seal the 2 sides
of the wall, the wall will simply head for the level of damp of the
ground it sits on, which will be more wet than damp.

When built, these walls would always be plastered in lime, they are
not designed for gypsum plaster, and some cant work with it.

Realise though that building material is very slow to dry, weeks per
inch of brick. A dehumidifier would speed this up.

Thanks for the suggestions. And after lime mortar is applied and dry,
what sort of finishing coat would you use? And what paint would you
use, if not emulsion?

distemper would be the best choice. However with Vic houses you can
usually still get away with emulsiion once you fix the other issues.

NT