Plastering & Rendering

End terrace rendered house, exterior side wall not painted and gets no sunlight, but gets wet

Anonymous user 28/02/2024 - 3.02 PM

I have a circa 1900 end terrace house that is having problems with damp on the end wall, most of the interior wall are plasterboard (put in before I bought the house), the exterior wall are rendered in I think plaster render, but the side wall has never been painted. This wall forms part of my neighbours alley, and until recently I had never really seen the wall below the gate, last year the landlord of that property left the gate open whilst clearing the garden and I was aghast to see that the render at the bottom of the wall was damp, disintegrated in places, and exposing damp crumbling brick work in places, I had a repair done to the render, and painted the unrendered portion in bitumen paint. The main problem is that the rain definitely gets to that wall, but the sunlight doesn't so it never gets a chance to dry out properly. Two questions- 1. any ideas how I can dry out the wall, when I have extremely limited access to the exterior of the wall (current tenants very unhelpful). 2. If I painted the render would that help, or would it cause more problems because it is already wet?