• Damp & Rot

The property was extremely damp - particularly in the living room.  This photograph shows how the pavement at the front of the property had been built up so that it breached the DPC.  We contacted the highways agency and after much wrangling - they agreed to dig a French drain.

Front of property showing pavement overlapping and breaching the existing DPC	Interior of corner under front window showing spalled brickwork and damp	Final shot showing solution to this particular damp issue - A French drain was installed by the highways agency after much negotiation
Shot showing the newly installed sole plates and DPC in the kitchen	Shot showing the newly installed sole plates and DPC in the living room

Once stripped back the entire timber frame was treated with a fungicidal system to help prevent further rot taking hold.  Much of the brickwork around the base of the timber frame was also injected with a chemical DPC.  This was to suppliment the physical DPC we also installed throughout much of the property.

• Side Wall

The lime render on the exterior side wall of the property was badly damaged.  Our solution was to knock it out from the inside and re-clad the wall using 8 x 4 ft sheets of 18mm thick exterior plywood.  This was then primed and rendered using a paint on render (Artex HyClad)  This is easier said and done as you can see from the pictures - We had about 11 inches between us and next door in which to work.

Shot of the side wall before we began to take it down.  Notice all of the debris that has fallen into the cavity.  This was also a major source of damp since as with the front of the property - the fallen render had breached the DPC.	A slightly different angle showing where the render had been patched with cement	Wide shot showing partially completed exterior ply wall - gap between houses is ~11 inches
A closer shot showing the in-progress wall and also the gravel bed that we installed after raking out all of the waste render that had fallen into the cavity.	An interior view of the partially completed plywood wall.

• Insulation

Since we had submitted full plans building regs - we were required to bring the properties insulation up to modern standards where possible.  This presented a particular challenge since we did not want to fill the timber cavities with insulation as this would prevent air flow and would in all likelihood lead to further damp problems.  After much research and discussions with building regs (including doing our own U-value calculations) we found a material that suited our particular application - Tri-Iso Super 9.  This is a very thin, multi layered foil type insulation that we could attach to the timber frame and batten over without blocking the cavities.