Hello, can anyone help!
We have a cottage, built circa 1920 which we have lived in for 10 years now. About 2 years ago, we noticed the internal partition wall (to the side of an internal archway)- between kitchen & dining room developed 'wet patch' at the bottom of the wall in the dining room - seemingly with the water/damp rising upwards, soaking up through the plaster/wallpaper - around 6" wide x 4-6" high varying in height (like a graph shape). Anoither smaller wet patch then appeared on the other side of the archway in the dining room (the bigger one patch to the left of the arch, the smaller one to the right side of the arch).
This has steadily got worse and now the patch is about 10" across and 6-8" high on one side and increased on the other side too. This only seems to appear when we are 'using' the house (we are out at work all day and away at weekends and mostly dry other times) We have cut a hole in the partition wall (expecting to find leaking pipes!) -and there are no pipes in there, just empty partitition wall. Inside the partition wall - the wooden frame at the bottom, sides/top is all perfectly bone dry, just the plaster on the dining room wall side is wet mainly in the evenings when we are at home.
We checked the water tanks in the loft and found the metal small tank was leaking, so replaced it, hoping this was the cause for the wet wall directly below it in the downstairs dining room. But not so. We then looked behind the kitchen cupboards and found/repaired two more small leaks (one from the diswasher soil pipe and one from the pipe behind the sink), thinking that the water may have travellled under the wood laminate floor to the dining room/kitchen partition wall (about 4 metres away).... but last night the water leak is back just as before.
The problem seems to be worse in the summer for some reason - and worse in the evenings, when we are home from work. We have pipes in the concrete kitchen floor under the wood laminate - big job to take all this up. We have a bathroom above the wall in question. Have checked under the bath/shower, but no sign of water leak there. Next option - take up carpet in bathroom and floorboards I guess, but drastic. Is there anything else obvious we can do other than the loo test with the food colouring? Any other suggestions before we take up floors! Thank you,
We have a cottage, built circa 1920 which we have lived in for 10 years now. About 2 years ago, we noticed the internal partition wall (to the side of an internal archway)- between kitchen & dining room developed 'wet patch' at the bottom of the wall in the dining room - seemingly with the water/damp rising upwards, soaking up through the plaster/wallpaper - around 6" wide x 4-6" high varying in height (like a graph shape). Anoither smaller wet patch then appeared on the other side of the archway in the dining room (the bigger one patch to the left of the arch, the smaller one to the right side of the arch).
This has steadily got worse and now the patch is about 10" across and 6-8" high on one side and increased on the other side too. This only seems to appear when we are 'using' the house (we are out at work all day and away at weekends and mostly dry other times) We have cut a hole in the partition wall (expecting to find leaking pipes!) -and there are no pipes in there, just empty partitition wall. Inside the partition wall - the wooden frame at the bottom, sides/top is all perfectly bone dry, just the plaster on the dining room wall side is wet mainly in the evenings when we are at home.
We checked the water tanks in the loft and found the metal small tank was leaking, so replaced it, hoping this was the cause for the wet wall directly below it in the downstairs dining room. But not so. We then looked behind the kitchen cupboards and found/repaired two more small leaks (one from the diswasher soil pipe and one from the pipe behind the sink), thinking that the water may have travellled under the wood laminate floor to the dining room/kitchen partition wall (about 4 metres away).... but last night the water leak is back just as before.
The problem seems to be worse in the summer for some reason - and worse in the evenings, when we are home from work. We have pipes in the concrete kitchen floor under the wood laminate - big job to take all this up. We have a bathroom above the wall in question. Have checked under the bath/shower, but no sign of water leak there. Next option - take up carpet in bathroom and floorboards I guess, but drastic. Is there anything else obvious we can do other than the loo test with the food colouring? Any other suggestions before we take up floors! Thank you,