Breathable floors, limecrete or other optoins?

[jason61c]

Evoluzione said:

You should get to know who P Ward is, as well as S. Edwards, N. Copsey and others who are making a living out of telling lies.

can you link to who they are? Google brings up cricketers for someone from an oceangraphic research centre. So I'm not sure what lies they're telling!

[Evoluzione]

jason61c said:

Evoluzione said:

You should get to know who P Ward is, as well as S. Edwards, N. Copsey and others who are making a living out of telling lies.

can you link to who they are? Google brings up cricketers for someone from an oceangraphic research centre. So I'm not sure what lies they're telling!

There is Wards channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/stibnite11
There is Copsey: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbwc4-u40zPKqnlNr...

Edwards is something to do with SPAB, he runs a FB group. If you go on there and respectfully disagree with anything (with proof) you'll get a PM telling you to stop followed by a ban.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't all BS, just some of it.

[OutInTheShed]

Evoluzione said:

You should get to know who P Ward is, as well as S. Edwards, N. Copsey and others who are making a living out of telling lies.

On any subject, there seem to be a lot of youtubers who talk complete rubbish, and a few who tell outright lies about what they've done.

Many of these channels are harmless entertainment, it really doesn't matter if it 's fact or fiction when somebody is spouting about sailing across the Atlantic or whatever, their subscribers are unlikely to do anything with any information which they get.
Any fool can publish stuff on Youtube, there is absolutely no requirement for it to be factual or well informed.
Even stuff which is well-meaning and essentially factual can leave out key information.

Youtube is great for videos of 'how does this come apart?' and that's about it for things you're going to rely on.

[Evoluzione]

OutInTheShed said:

Evoluzione said:

You should get to know who P Ward is, as well as S. Edwards, N. Copsey and others who are making a living out of telling lies.

On any subject, there seem to be a lot of youtubers who talk complete rubbish, and a few who tell outright lies about what they've done.

Many of these channels are harmless entertainment, it really doesn't matter if it 's fact or fiction when somebody is spouting about sailing across the Atlantic or whatever, their subscribers are unlikely to do anything with any information which they get.
Any fool can publish stuff on Youtube, there is absolutely no requirement for it to be factual or well informed.
Even stuff which is well-meaning and essentially factual can leave out key information.

Youtube is great for videos of 'how does this come apart?' and that's about it for things you're going to rely on.

They aren't just Youtubers. They run FB pages and businesses ripping people off, write papers, books, travel globally to preach, get employed by Councils and authorities to advise etc.

[jason61c]

Evoluzione said:

jason61c said:

Evoluzione said:

You should get to know who P Ward is, as well as S. Edwards, N. Copsey and others who are making a living out of telling lies.

can you link to who they are? Google brings up cricketers for someone from an oceangraphic research centre. So I'm not sure what lies they're telling!

There is Wards channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/stibnite11
There is Copsey: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbwc4-u40zPKqnlNr...

Edwards is something to do with SPAB, he runs a FB group. If you go on there and respectfully disagree with anything (with proof) you'll get a PM telling you to stop followed by a ban.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't all BS, just some of it.

That looks like a lot of vids to watch. some of the titles leave don't leave much room for movement do they. I'd bet half rubbish, half sensible info.

[OutInTheShed]

Evoluzione said:

They aren't just Youtubers. They run FB pages and businesses ripping people off, write papers, books, travel globally to preach, get employed by Councils and authorities to advise etc.

The question is, do they believe these 'lies'?

Not my field.
In my world there are plenty of 'academics' who have been wrong.
I've worked with a bloke who's sold a fair few books, he was brought in as a consultant.
He was pursuing a solution which I was sure wouldn't work and it didn't.
(fair solution, wrong problem)
Not sure that makes him a liar or a charlatan. I think he's not as good as he claims to be, but that's con-sultants for you.

When I had my first house, built (badly) in 1903 or so, I had problems with it which were eventually solved by an old builder who taught me a few things.
One of which is that however much trouble you go to keeping water away from where it's not meant to be, some will always get there, and it needs a way out.
He had a list of 'experts', specialists, college lecturers, purveyors of patent gunge etc whom he labelled "XXXXs who've done more damage than the XXXXing Luftwaffe."

[monkfish1]

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

As it happens it settled out at 65%

You can't quote a figure of 65% in isolation, it's meaningless.
RH is up and down constantly.
It's like saying the temperature in the UK is 20 and leaving it at that.

For clarity, post all the work, the humidity level in the room sits at 65% plus or minus 3% all the time. Ive not seen it go outside those numbers now for 3 months. It will be interesting to see what happens during the course of the winter. My first with everything completed.

The temp is also stable at around 21.5c. Thats not because it fantastically well insulated though, its just because its heated. Via UFH.

[monkfish1]

Equus said:

monkfish1 said:

Going for the maximum breathability in many cases may be overkill

Can you explain by what mechanism increasing the breathability (and thereby moisture transmission) of a ground-bearing floor will improve the overall situation?

monkfish1 said:

All that said, im unconvinced about externally insulating the wall. That means all your moisture will need to disperse inside. That isnt going to happen.

Why do you believe that?

Are you aware that thermal resistance and vapour resistance are different things - that you can have the one without the other?

Do you understand how to predict condensation risk in a wall? That's a serious question, by the way, and not intended as antagonistic: I can explain it to you if required.

1, Trying to avoid it going into the base of the walls. Ie, exactly like it was before. As ive said before, previously it was concrete on DPM and gypsum plaster. Walls sopping wet up to about 18 inches from floor level. Ive replaced the floor as discussed and plastered in lime. The walls are completely dry now. Was it the only possible solution? Probably not. Did it work? Very definitely yes.

2. I wont claim to fully understand. Just that what the other poster was proposing struck as a a problem looking for somewhere to happen, based, nostly on my own experiences rather than any science. Always happy to hear a version in plain english though.

[Evoluzione]

monkfish1 said:

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

As it happens it settled out at 65%

You can't quote a figure of 65% in isolation, it's meaningless.
RH is up and down constantly.
It's like saying the temperature in the UK is 20 and leaving it at that.

For clarity, post all the work, the humidity level in the room sits at 65% plus or minus 3% all the time. Ive not seen it go outside those numbers now for 3 months. It will be interesting to see what happens during the course of the winter. My first with everything completed.

The temp is also stable at around 21.5c. Thats not because it fantastically well insulated though, its just because its heated. Via UFH.

That's more meaningful. It's likely the heat is keeping it that way, not the lime. It would be interesting to see what happens if you turned the heating off. Humidity would rocket...
For reference in our cold damp bedroom in our very damp house yesterday it was 64%. That's not the whole story of course, it was 15c (no heating on, not even recently), no de-humidifier and the windows were open. We had woken up (windows closed) to 99%.

With regards to your last post to Equus, I'm beginning to believe that in a lot (most? All?) of cases lime is not so much curing an issue, it's simply dissipating the damp around without it showing. With lime you have to cover it with a breathable coat, if you put a modern (plastic) paint on you'd get a bad reaction as the damp is no longer able to get out.
I wonder if the lime floor/lime plastered walls are just shifting damp between the two, sharing the load perhaps and allowing it to escape unnoticed. Hopefully with some/most going outside.

I wonder what kind of (bad) reaction laying a laminate floor onto a limecrete floor would have....

[Evoluzione]

OutInTheShed said:

Evoluzione said:

They aren't just Youtubers. They run FB pages and businesses ripping people off, write papers, books, travel globally to preach, get employed by Councils and authorities to advise etc.

The question is, do they believe these 'lies'?

Not my field.
In my world there are plenty of 'academics' who have been wrong.
I've worked with a bloke who's sold a fair few books, he was brought in as a consultant.
He was pursuing a solution which I was sure wouldn't work and it didn't.
(fair solution, wrong problem)
Not sure that makes him a liar or a charlatan. I think he's not as good as he claims to be, but that's con-sultants for you.

When I had my first house, built (badly) in 1903 or so, I had problems with it which were eventually solved by an old builder who taught me a few things.
One of which is that however much trouble you go to keeping water away from where it's not meant to be, some will always get there, and it needs a way out.
He had a list of 'experts', specialists, college lecturers, purveyors of patent gunge etc whom he labelled "XXXXs who've done more damage than the XXXXing Luftwaffe."

There is no answer that, but I can certainly prove some of their claims to be wrong.
One for example repointed a semi in York, he claimed his wonderful hot lime pointing had completely dried the house walls out. He 'proved' this by showing a picture of the two semis, the one on the left looked a lighter colour than that on the right.

Two things:
One is that you can drastically change the overall colour and appearance of a house with the pointing colour.
That isn't enough proof though.
The other thing I did is I went onto Google Streetview and found the houses, it was an old picture taken before one was repointed. Both houses were different colours then too, the one on the left being the lighter one.

[monkfish1]

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

As it happens it settled out at 65%

You can't quote a figure of 65% in isolation, it's meaningless.
RH is up and down constantly.
It's like saying the temperature in the UK is 20 and leaving it at that.

For clarity, post all the work, the humidity level in the room sits at 65% plus or minus 3% all the time. Ive not seen it go outside those numbers now for 3 months. It will be interesting to see what happens during the course of the winter. My first with everything completed.

The temp is also stable at around 21.5c. Thats not because it fantastically well insulated though, its just because its heated. Via UFH.

That's more meaningful. It's likely the heat is keeping it that way, not the lime. It would be interesting to see what happens if you turned the heating off. Humidity would rocket...
For reference in our cold damp bedroom in our very damp house yesterday it was 64%. That's not the whole story of course, it was 15c (no heating on, not even recently), no de-humidifier and the windows were open. We had woken up (windows closed) to 99%.

With regards to your last post to Equus, I'm beginning to believe that in a lot (most? All?) of cases lime is not so much curing an issue, it's simply dissipating the damp around without it showing. With lime you have to cover it with a breathable coat, if you put a modern (plastic) paint on you'd get a bad reaction as the damp is no longer able to get out.
I wonder if the lime floor/lime plastered walls are just shifting damp between the two, sharing the load perhaps and allowing it to escape unnoticed. Hopefully with some/most going outside.

I wonder what kind of (bad) reaction laying a laminate floor onto a limecrete floor would have....

Well, prior to the work it was 21c AND 90% plus humidity. Salts coming out the plaster, mould, and walls wet enough to rot the socket back boxes to nothing.

So it better now.

I always believed lime just allows dispersal of said moisture. Stripping the plaster off my walls proved that. To stop it requires DPC and DPM. But i cant have that as the house is pre-existing. Well, thats not strictly true, i "could" have retrofitted a DPC, but thats a major undertaking, especially with a party wall! . Which i also think would have just meant the bricks below DPC would be wetter still. Permanenty. Theres a reason they use concrete block or engineering brick below ground now.

Edited by monkfish1 on Monday 14th November 22:30

[Evoluzione]

monkfish1 said:

Well, prior to the work it was 21c AND 90% plus humidity. Salts coming out the plaster, mould, and walls wet enough to rot the socket back boxes to nothing.

So it better now. But sure, if it was 10c, humidity goes up.

I always believed lime just allows dispersal of said moisture. Stripping the plaster off my walls proved that. To stop it requires DPC and DPM. But i cant have that as the house is pre-existing. Well, thats not strictly true, i "could" have retrofitted a DPC, but thats a major undertaking, especially with a party wall! . Which i also think would have just meant the bricks below DPC would be wetter still. Permanenty. Theres a reason they use concrete block or engineering brick below ground now.

I wonder what would happen if you peeled back the carpet and put a large glass bowl on the floor for a while, maybe with a damp meter in it.
In my very early twenties with little knowledge and even less money I'd bought a damp house. Familiar story, solid walls, retro-fitted concrete floors with no DPM or anything. Rising damp of course, I cured this by digging a trench around the base of the walls, lined it with polythene and dropped concrete in. I wouldn't really recommend doing this, but it did work.
I laid polythene over the whole area and put an engineered wood floor down, it was fine for many, many years as I lived there quite a while.

It's good that we can openly discuss what we think is happening, especially for me as i'm now starting all over again. Just further down the line, with more knowledge, a little more money, but also insulation is now more of a priority now.
I like to blend old with modern technology to try and get something working even better than it did or could. So far that approach has worked on stopping rain from coming in with a house which is pleasing to the eye.

We have engineered wood floors down here so I haven't been able to look at what we have for ground floors, i'm not expecting a pleasant surprise!

[jason61c]

Evoluzione said:

That's more meaningful. It's likely the heat is keeping it that way, not the lime. It would be interesting to see what happens if you turned the heating off. Humidity would rocket...
For reference in our cold damp bedroom in our very damp house yesterday it was 64%. That's not the whole story of course, it was 15c (no heating on, not even recently), no de-humidifier and the windows were open. We had woken up (windows closed) to 99%.

With regards to your last post to Equus, I'm beginning to believe that in a lot (most? All?) of cases lime is not so much curing an issue, it's simply dissipating the damp around without it showing. With lime you have to cover it with a breathable coat, if you put a modern (plastic) paint on you'd get a bad reaction as the damp is no longer able to get out.
I wonder if the lime floor/lime plastered walls are just shifting damp between the two, sharing the load perhaps and allowing it to escape unnoticed. Hopefully with some/most going outside.

I wonder what kind of (bad) reaction laying a laminate floor onto a limecrete floor would have....

I think putting a laminate floor onto concrete would just cause water to pool underneath the laminate. I had bitumen on the old concrete floor, it was covered in water under the bitumen, no issues with the lime.

Part of it is that if you go for lime everything, ie plaster/render/floor, you just allow more areas for moisture to escape from, instead of what happened with us, where it was being 'forced' into the areas of least resistance.

you're right about modern paints, you need to go the whole hog. I've just done the house in a silicate paint, as I didn't want to limewash every few years.

[monkfish1]

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Well, prior to the work it was 21c AND 90% plus humidity. Salts coming out the plaster, mould, and walls wet enough to rot the socket back boxes to nothing.

So it better now. But sure, if it was 10c, humidity goes up.

I always believed lime just allows dispersal of said moisture. Stripping the plaster off my walls proved that. To stop it requires DPC and DPM. But i cant have that as the house is pre-existing. Well, thats not strictly true, i "could" have retrofitted a DPC, but thats a major undertaking, especially with a party wall! . Which i also think would have just meant the bricks below DPC would be wetter still. Permanenty. Theres a reason they use concrete block or engineering brick below ground now.

I wonder what would happen if you peeled back the carpet and put a large glass bowl on the floor for a while, maybe with a damp meter in it.
In my very early twenties with little knowledge and even less money I'd bought a damp house. Familiar story, solid walls, retro-fitted concrete floors with no DPM or anything. Rising damp of course, I cured this by digging a trench around the base of the walls, lined it with polythene and dropped concrete in. I wouldn't really recommend doing this, but it did work.
I laid polythene over the whole area and put an engineered wood floor down, it was fine for many, many years as I lived there quite a while.

It's good that we can openly discuss what we think is happening, especially for me as i'm now starting all over again. Just further down the line, with more knowledge, a little more money, but also insulation is now more of a priority now.
I like to blend old with modern technology to try and get something working even better than it did or could. So far that approach has worked on stopping rain from coming in with a house which is pleasing to the eye.

We have engineered wood floors down here so I haven't been able to look at what we have for ground floors, i'm not expecting a pleasant surprise!

Its not carpeted, but thats as a consequence of flood risk rather than anything else. Prior to tiling, i left cardboard on the floor. That stayed dry.

Its the insulation thats the challenge. Lots of systems out there. Not much in the way of long term proof with solid walls. Plus every situation is different. My current take is the same as ive done here. Insulate the floor and roof. Then concentrate on air tightness. Accept the losses through the wall. Its the compromise of having an older building.

All that said, ive just bought a stone cottage up the side of a big hill, thats had the living room panneled out with insulated plaster board, concrete floor on DPM and cement pointing and its completely dry as far as ive seen so far. Given its location and local climate one would expect it to be suffering. As ive said before, every situation is different. Maybe because the stone is rock hard and completely impervious to water. Unlike the one ive just done which had sponges for bricks.

For your place, i guess the wind driven rain will always be the number 1 issue?

[Evoluzione]

monkfish1 said:

Its not carpeted, but thats as a consequence of flood risk rather than anything else. Prior to tiling, i left cardboard on the floor. That stayed dry.

Its the insulation thats the challenge. Lots of systems out there. Not much in the way of long term proof with solid walls. Plus every situation is different. My current take is the same as ive done here. Insulate the floor and roof. Then concentrate on air tightness. Accept the losses through the wall. Its the compromise of having an older building.

All that said, ive just bought a stone cottage up the side of a big hill, thats had the living room panelled out with insulated plaster board, concrete floor on DPM and cement pointing and its completely dry as far as ive seen so far. Given its location and local climate one would expect it to be suffering. As ive said before, every situation is different. Maybe because the stone is rock hard and completely impervious to water. Unlike the one ive just done which had sponges for bricks.

For your place, i guess the wind driven rain will always be the number 1 issue?

Yes you can get away with cement pointing on some solid walls, it's largely dependent on the hardness of the stone/brick, in the past I believe acid rain played it's part, but this is much less of a problem now, if at all. I would never recommend nor do it, but most (99.9%) of old private properties in Yorks/Lancs are done in it and they aren't all suffering. I have seen and cured soft stone walls which have suffered though.
There are cases whereby original lime pointed walls erode too, this is what the lime zealots don't understand, there are no rules.

amongst other things, yes prolonged and severe wind driven rain have been a problem here in the past, whether right from the start or not I don't know, but the evidence suggests war was waged on it for a long time. Not any longer, I've got to decide what to do to with the inside of the walls now to get a decoratable finish and hopefully some insulation. As you imply that can be difficult and expensive.

[Snow and Rocks]

monkfish1 said:

Its not carpeted, but thats as a consequence of flood risk rather than anything else. Prior to tiling, i left cardboard on the floor. That stayed dry.

I'm curious about laying tiles over a floor specified so as to be vapour permeable? Are you not in effect sealing everything in with the tiled cap?

With a background in geology I agree entirely about lime pointing only being of value when the stone is either soft or has a reasonably high permeability (typically sandstone) - our house in Aberdeenshire is a mix of igneous rock (mostly gabbro but with granite lintels from a nearby old hill quarry) which is not only unbelievably hard, it's almost completely impermeable. You could go at it with a pick axe and get nothing but sparks! Like almost every stone building i can think of around here, it's pointed with cement with no issue.

[monkfish1]

Snow and Rocks said:

monkfish1 said:

Its not carpeted, but thats as a consequence of flood risk rather than anything else. Prior to tiling, i left cardboard on the floor. That stayed dry.

I'm curious about laying tiles over a floor specified so as to be vapour permeable? Are you not in effect sealing everything in with the tiled cap?

With a background in geology I agree entirely about lime pointing only being of value when the stone is either soft or has a reasonably high permeability (typically sandstone) - our house in Aberdeenshire is a mix of igneous rock (mostly gabbro but with granite lintels from a nearby old hill quarry) which is not only unbelievably hard, it's almost completely impermeable. You could go at it with a pick axe and get nothing but sparks! Like almost every stone building i can think of around here, it's pointed with cement with no issue.

Its done with limestone tiles and lime mortar/bedding. So probably more permeable than the NHL5 slab. But the best achievable result. But that was a concern.

[Magooagain]

Snow and Rocks said:

I'm curious about laying tiles over a floor specified so as to be vapour permeable? Are you not in effect sealing everything in with the tiled cap?

With a background in geology I agree entirely about lime pointing only being of value when the stone is either soft or has a reasonably high permeability (typically sandstone) - our house in Aberdeenshire is a mix of igneous rock (mostly gabbro but with granite lintels from a nearby old hill quarry) which is not only unbelievably hard, it's almost completely impermeable. You could go at it with a pick axe and get nothing but sparks! Like almost every stone building i can think of around here, it's pointed with cement with no issue.

I agree with the cement pointing doing no harm to granite rock etc,but what method was used to build many granite and other hard stone buildings?
They won't have been laid in cement mortar
And there's a high chance the foundation stones are laid on soil and probably the rest of the stones are laid with a soil/chalk/lime mortar mix.

So that allows moisture to be sponged up from below the ground level where there is no cement pointing.
So where does that moisture go if it can't get out through lime pointing?

[monkfish1]

Magooagain said:

I agree with the cement pointing doing no harm to granite rock etc,but what method was used to build many granite and other hard stone buildings?
They won't have been laid in cement mortar
And there's a high chance the foundation stones are laid on soil and probably the rest of the stones are laid with a soil/chalk/lime mortar mix.

So that allows moisture to be sponged up from below the ground level where there is no cement pointing.
So where does that moisture go if it can't get out through lime pointing?

This is a question troubling me on my latest aquisition. Its been pointed in cement inside and out. The stone is harder than a hard thing. Utterley imperviois to moisture.

Ive primed myself to remove it all and repoint in lime, but there no evidence of damp. Yet. But it is stone with rubble in-fill. As you say, by any measure of logic, the lime mortar that is "in" the wall may well be wet. If it stays that way, it will degrade long term.

What to do????

[OutInTheShed]

monkfish1 said:

This is a question troubling me on my latest aquisition. Its been pointed in cement inside and out. The stone is harder than a hard thing. Utterley imperviois to moisture.

Ive primed myself to remove it all and repoint in lime, but there no evidence of damp. Yet. But it is stone with rubble in-fill. As you say, by any measure of logic, the lime mortar that is "in" the wall may well be wet. If it stays that way, it will degrade long term.

What to do????

Why not drill a hole or two to see how wet the lime mortar is?

If your stone is non-porous, there is an argument for the external pointing to be non-porous, because putting horizontal strata of 'porous/non porous' encourages water to travel into the wall from the outer side.

The cemet mortar will be fairly vapour permeable won't it?