SAS Urban Survival Handbook (7 page)

Doors and windows

Check for severe distortion and paint or varnish in bad condition (plastic frames and some metal frames may not need painting). Ferrous metals and most woods must be protected from the weather. Look for gaps between frames and walls and cracked putty round windowpanes. Clear drip grooves under sills, which are designed to allow water to drip harmlessly off the edge. When blocked or bridged, water will penetrate where the sill joins the wall.

Woodwork

All external woodwork should be weatherproofed, usually with paint, varnish or preservative. Most problems are easy to spot. Bodged repairs never last. It’s far better to get the job done properly. Check for wet rot—usually apparent from the ‘sponginess’ of the wood, which may also break away very easily. This rot must be treated because it will spread or lead to dry rot—which is more serious (see
Rot
).

INSIDE CHECKS

Structural distortion

Movement of the building may produce interior cracks in the plasterwork, distortion of door and window frames, slipped cracks in the corners of rooms (most noticeable when wallpaper looks stretched or torn). If the structure is actually sound, remedial work is mostly cosmetic. In severe cases, doors and windows will stick, glass in windows will break, and floors will slope. Changes in use of a building, heavy furniture or a whole library of books in an upstairs room will take their toll. So will changes in climate, which cause the internal timbers to expand and contract.

Support walls

Home ‘improvers’ sometimes knock out a wall between two small rooms, to create a larger one. Careful checks must be made to see if you are removing a support wall.

If the joists supporting the floor above (or in the loft space) run parallel to the wall, you are probably all right. However, if they run at right angles to the wall—or travel at right angles over the wall—then you are going to have to insert a special reinforced steel joist. In some cases a support pillar may be required to give extra strength.

When you consider that the load on this wall may include the support of a roof brace, it is easy to imagine what would happen if the wall was removed!

Check thoroughly. A wall which is not load-bearing on the ground floor might be positioned to help carry one of the upper floors of the building.

DAMP

Damp conditions can be disastrous to your health, and distressing to live with. There are three main problems:

Rising damp

Rising damp is caused by water soaking up from the ground into the walls. Most houses have a dampproof course to prevent this, but this barrier may be bridged on the outside (perhaps by a pile of earth), or on the inside (the plaster on the wall may have been taken down too far). In houses with cavity walls, debris may have accumulated at the bottom of the cavity.

This problem must be checked very early on. Look for damp plaster and peeling wallpaper at or near floor level—although in severe cases there is no limit to how high the damp will rise. Skirtings, floor joists and floorboards may be damp or even rotten.

Penetrating damp

Penetrating damp is more likely in older homes—or at least, buildings with solid walls. Cavity walls don’t tend to favour damp penetration, unless the cavity has been bridged. A full check must be made outside to try to find the point of entry.

Condensation

Condensation—evident as water droplets on walls and ceilings, windows heavily laden with moisture, damp furnishings—is caused by warm, moisture-laden air coming into contact with cold, uninsulated surfaces. It is aggravated by bad ventilation. In severe cases mould may form, plaster walls may disintegrate, wood and furnishings may rot.

TESTS FOR DAMPNESS

A moisture meter, which you may be able to hire, will not only tell you if a surface is damp—it will also tell you where the greatest concentration of moisture is located. This could be invaluable if you are having trouble locating the source of the damp. The meter has two pins which penetrate the damp surface and produce a reading.

If you can’t decide whether a surface is damp or not—perhaps it is a cold external wall or a concrete floor—tape a sheet of polythene on a selected area. If there is a lot of moisture present in that area, droplets will form on the underside of the polythene sheet.

Raising the temperature in a room increases the capacity of the air to hold moisture without condensing. But it’s a major battle against cold walls and windows which need insulating. Cold pipes should be generously lagged. In the desire to cut off draughts, there is the danger of sealing all ventilation from a room (see
Gas
).

Condensation also occurs when a chimney has been closed off or removed without the insertion of an airbrick, or in the roof when loft insulation is carried too far into the breathing spaces round the eaves.

REMEMBER

Just as we need fresh air to survive, good ventilation is vital to keep your home healthy. Airbricks—basically bricks with holes in—are used to vent the spaces under floors or in sealed chimney stacks. These prevent the build-up of moisture-laden air. Don’t block them!

In rooms with high levels of condensation, such as kitchens and bathrooms, extractor fans should be employed—either on an outside wall or through a window. If neither is available it may be necessary to run ducting to a suitable escape point.

WARNING

Don’t seal off every little draught from a room, particularly if it’s regularly occupied or contains a fuel-burning appliance. Moisture build-up from human breath and burning fuel will produce condensation. Most fuel-burning appliances also produce moisture, along with carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide—which are highly poisonous, especially in concentration.

ROT/INFESTATION

All woodwork, especially softwoods (which comprise a large amount of the inner framework of most houses), should not be exposed to persistent wet conditions, whatever the cause. The occasional spillage of water is harmless, but constant wetting will lay the way open for wet rot or dry rot.

Rot

Areas most likely to develop rot are roof timbers (either from damp penetration or condensation), bathrooms (round the bath, shower, toilet, bidet), kitchens (round the sink), window frames, door frames, floors and skirtings (particularly in the presence of rising damp).

Dry rot
is the more serious. It lives on timber, favouring damp unventilated spaces. Usually it goes undetected until it is well under way, the first sign often being a floorboard beginning to weaken. It gives off a distinctive mushroomy smell which should be noticeable in severe cases.

The wood darkens in colour and cracks across and along the grain, producing an uneven network of squares, often with grey furry patches of mould. The wood becomes very light and crumbly. If the air is very moist round the fungus, it may produce larger fluffy whitish growths. After a year or so it produces thick bracket-like fruiting bodies with rust-red spores clearly visible.

Dry rot is fast and deadly. It will travel across brickwork to reach unaffected timber. The spores travel well, and if they land on moist timber the whole process is accelerated.

Wet rot
needs damp wood to survive. The fungus usually only penetrates damp wood. It doesn’t spread in the same way—it’s unlikely to produce fruiting bodies indoors.

It grows into the wet wood, softening it, and producing cracks along the grain. More than one fungus can produce wet rot, but the wood may appear lighter in colour and very fibrous, sometimes with brown strands on the surface.

Wet rot tends to die if the wood dries out, but the path may be open for dry rot to develop.

Any case of rot must be treated as a top priority. Affected timbers may need to be cut out and replaced. At any rate, whatever the scale of the emergency, expert help should be sought. All wood should be treated with chemicals to inhibit further mould growth, after all possible sources of damp have been eliminated. Any wood being cut out and removed should be in sealed polythene bags and disposed of finally by burning.

WARNING

New timber used for skirting boards, window frames and door frames may be ‘green wood’. Traditionally timber was seasoned before use – left for a couple of years to expand, contract or warp and adjust to atmospheric moisture. With increased demand, wood is sometimes kiln-dried to speed up the process.

Much new wood may still be ‘green’, containing a substantial amount of water. It is quite common for such wood to rot, once installed and painted.