Plumbing

Please Help!! Damp screed and possible leak. and no idea how to contact anymore

Anonymous user 23/02/2024 - 3.51 PM

Hello, I’m completely lost and no idea on what the next steps are or what trade to contact anymore 😢 A couple of weeks ago we noticed the laminate in our kitchen starting to lift, we thought it was just getting old until we started noticing water coming up from between the damaged joints. We ripped up the laminate last week to find the underlay and screed completely wet. We left the screed a few days to try and dry it out but weren’t really seeing any progress, two days ago we had a plumber relative cut the pipes to the kitchen taps (that ran under the floor) and redirect them above ground. We thought we were seeing some progress with the screed drying out yesterday but I’ve come down this morning and the patches that had started to dry are wet again 😭 we’ve had two dehumidifiers working all night. I don’t understand why it’s wet again or where it’s all coming from. For a bit of background, it’s the extension part of the kitchen that is almost all wet but we believe it is over 10years old and can see the black of the damp proof membrane on the outside bricks and the corners of the kitchen behind the cabinets. Our solicitor asked the sellers if it was built over Thames Water’s pipes and they said no. It has a lantern roof that had been leaking in the corners but the corners are away from the walls of the building. I suffer with severe anxiety and depression when it comes to any problems with a house due to being ripped off and threatened by a builder a few years ago (we were left with half an extension and loads of money gone) so I’m really struggling to cope with this. This is a different house to the one the builder ripped us off in as we had to get away from the memories, so it’s not something that they neglected to do. Any help or advice you can give on how we get this fixed and who to contact would be much appreciated.