Too busy mopping to blog
Remember I mentioned we were planning to change the shower in our house? A couple of days work, I thought. Seems I thought wrong.
When I removed the old shower the floor underneath seemed damper than I expected – not altogether surprising since the old shower leaked, which is why we’re replacing it.
‘Let’s give it a day or two to dry before I fit the new one’, I said knowledgeably to Mrs B. Strangely, two days later the floor was wetter than ever, and I had taken to knocking holes in walls to find leaky plumbing, but still we couldn’t find any trace of where the water was coming from (Mrs B had joined in by this stage).
The mystery grew when we concluded that the water might be coming from the other bathroom, a few metres away, and flowing under the floorboards. Seemed unlikely, but we looked anyway – and yes there was water under the floor of the other bathroom.
More holes knocked in walls, more floorboards demolished, but still no sign of where the water was coming from. We continued to search! I know you’d think it would be easy to find a leak, but my water divining skills are not great, the floorboards are tongue-and-groove so it isn’t easy to just lift occasional ones up for a quick look, and the plumbing joints are sealed inside walls.
Our barn is split level, with a 40 centimetre step down along the middle, and it now seems likely that this step means that the concrete floor is laid in two parts, each with a separate damp proof course, and the possibility of a slight gap between the two (ie the damp proof course for the higher floor is above the level of the lower floor).
This, combined with very heavy rain in the last day or two and a rising water table, seems to have given rise to our very own little indoor stream that emerges between the two levels. By sheer coincidence it then causes puddles under both bathrooms but almost nowhere else!
This problem is slightly irritating since we knew when we converted the barn into our home that this was a potential problem (there is a slight uphill slope to one side of the property) so we had a drain put in professionally along that side of the property to stop it happening.
Anyway, now we’ve (hopefully) found the problem we can start to sort it out – I’m sure the girls won’t mind me spending loads of money on a bigger, better drain instead of buying them Christmas presents – but it makes me wonder, if we hadn’t decided to replace the shower, how long would it have been before we discovered the problem? We only get these very heavy rains a couple of times a year and having an occasional babbling brook under the floor doesn’t actually seem to cause any particular problems.
So my ‘two days to change the shower’ has so far become a week spent making holes in the walls and floor, and the likelihood of a bill that would bail out a struggling bank or two.
But no time for worrying about that right now, where did I put the mop, and my book about indoor water features?
Any chance of compensation under the ten year guarantee thingy?
I’d wondered about that. First we would need to be able to prove the cause of the problem, then prove that the drain fitted wasn’t up to the job. Our previous experience of contesting this kind of ‘debateable’ issue hasn’t been very successful.
It’s debateable who is responsible because the natural water table actually has risen over the last couple of years – lots of houses that previously had no problems at all suddenly had damp floors last spring, and have been installing additional drains during the last few months.
Crumbs, opposite round here….the drought has been shrinking the clay soil and people are having all sorts of problems getting compensation.
That’s part of the mystery really, because we are on clay soil and have had very little rain over the last few months. Where we live the rain always drains through the 30cm of ‘topsoil’ and soaks it like a sponge but it can’t penetrate the clay below, so the water then comes flooding across the surface instead. Doesn’t take much rain at all and a couple of local roads are blocked by floods.
I daresay the clay underneath is bone dry and shrinking away happily – that will be next year’s problem I expect.
Yes it is true, be careful with the clay because if you have a dry summer next year, the ground will be “moving”
An extreme solution would be to secure foundations and you may guess it does not come cheap. But you need to decide, either take a preventive action with underpinning or fix the damage walls once you see large cracks on them (and it will be more difficult to sell your property later on).
Matthieu
Dry clay yes a problem,but i bigger problem after dry glay,is when it gots wet again,and then you get HEAVE (upwards push)
Which WP template do you use?
I think I started with one of the very basic free wp themes about 3 years ago but I’ve changed it quite a lot since and can’t quite remember which one.
There are much better (more modern) themes available now e.g. see the themes at HERE and HERE – the second one is also a completely free theme), but since I like the blog to look quite like the main francethisway site I haven’t changed it recently.