Damp Proofing

Damp spots in living room - replaster or something more serious?

Anonymous user 14/03/2024 - 2.33 PM

Hello, I'm having a problem with some recurring spots of damp in my living room. I live in a terraced house, and it's about 100 years old. The damp isn't pervasive - if anything it's just tiny little spots of wetness which most people wouldn't notice - but I'm keen to get it sorted if possible! The damp patches occur around the mantelpiece of the fireplace (on the chimney breast), and in the two alcoves either side of the fireplace, mostly around two plug sockets. It's limited to the very bottoms of the wall and doesn't reach higher than around half a meter. The walls here are very cold to the touch. This wall adjoins to the next house in the terraced row. The skirting boards don't appear to be affected and aren't crumbling at all. The walls in this room have been papered before painting and the paper is becoming warped at the edges where the damp spots are. We only noticed the problem when we repainted the room from cream silk emulsion to green matt paint. We've tried damp proof paint, which has held the spots at bay for a few months, but we've just turned the central heating off for summer and the spots are instantly back. They dry very quickly if a fan heater's directed at them though! Think it gets a bit worse when it rains but again, dries up quite quickly apart from a few stubborn spots. Does this sound like rising damp, or another kind of damp? As it's an old house, we don't think it has a DPC (we know the walls are lime), but before moving in we had new air bricks put in to allow better ventilation and the sub-timbers cut back so they weren't touching the walls of the house. This was costly in itself so we're hoping there may be an easy (ish?!) answer to stop the spots coming back. Would re-rendering and replastering do it, or do we need to try something more drastic? Any ideas would be great! Thank you