Level Decking, Cracked Lead & Damp Walls - ASB #11

[Music] hello it's Roger Bisbee here from skill-builder and here's another episode of ask skill-builder we're doing really well with this got loads of questions coming in and we're very grateful for that and also we're grateful for the comments that come in as well beneath them because that makes it a lot more entertaining and a lot more useful to people because obviously the more opinions you can get the better and it's not just about questions you know if they are wire that's final you're having building booked um we want those questions but also if you've got anything weird and wacky you just want to show us something that you think is interesting funny or alarm and then send those in as well so here's a question from Gary made you now but Gary's said in three photographs here and he said what alerted him to the problem was that he saw a little wet patch little mark on the the plasterboard ceiling below and he looked outside and he could see these white mystery marks on the LED flashing so what I think is going on here is that the LED has cracked now it's cracked because it's been put in in one piece and you should never ever put a piece of lead in in one piece the maximum that you should have in the way of a LED flashing is 1.5 meters in other words five feet and that is what they call code for lead which is before pound LED now in this case it looks to me there's no way of knowing for sure but it looks to me like they've used some code three LEDs which is a little bit cheaper a little bit lighter and if you're using code three LED you can only go to a maximum of a meter with it instead of one and a half meters and the reason is because LED expands and contracts in the Sun and he said this is a south-facing aspect so as that LED contracts and expands it starts to buckle and if it is in too long a length it can't expand enough and it will buckle in those places and those buckles will eventually lead to cracks now what he said is he's got there's some white sort of furry stuff coming up through the cracks and that's what made him notice them now what that is is that when you put LED onto a roof you're supposed to put what they call patination all on the lid which is just an oil that you put on which stops it from going white stops that oxidization on the lid a lot of people put that on the front but they don't put it on the underside of the lid and normally that wouldn't be a problem because you would never see the underside of a LED but what's happened here is because it's cracked the oxidization from the underside is crept up through the crack and appeared on the on the top surface of the LED as a white mark so that's not the end of the world that's not the problem the problem is that that lead has been put in the two longer lengths and really speaking the only thing I can think he can do with it is to take it out you could cut it into one meter strips in situ and then put a cover piece over each of those joins a six inch cover piece over each of those joints but it starts to look a mess I think if I were doing it I would take the whole lot out I put in some code for LED because code four is really what you should be using and and make sure it doesn't exceed 1.5 meters in length and then it will be fine hi Roger my problem is that I have this damp patch developing on a bedroom wall it's just below the window which is a double glazed unit installed about ten years ago is to top right one in this picture and it gets the worst of the weather I know the wall constructions cavity wall and it's got these pellets blown into it at some stage and I think the water is tracking across those as far as I can see all the seals around the outside are okay and I've added extra mastic taking off any bad stuff it's slightly damp in this corner you can see the seal the decorative seal is coming off but below its needs to be tracking through and getting really bad any idea how I can stop this is seized chikki you know damp is always one of those things that people jump to conclusions with them they don't know what this is now Phil he saw his stamp appearing around the edges of his window and he thought it was the mastic seal around the edge of the window so he did all that he went round there sealed it all up six months I - its back again that's interesting why did it take six months could it be seasonal we've got a good picture here of cavity wall insulation which is this polystyrene beads that they used to put in now and though you do get some problems with that system where the damp migrates across the cavities so I don't know that's what I'm going to say feel quite honestly and it'd be very interesting to get some comments from other people below and see what they think there are the possibilities here is that we've got penetrating damp from from the outside to the inside but it's rendered the wall looks rendered ok there's a bit of paint flaking off in that top left-hand corner there up in the gable you can see but other than that the render looks pretty good so why is he getting damp in through that render if he's eliminated the seal around the edge it could be that he's got cold bridging coming there now they look like aluminium frames it's got in there so the cold bridging is when you get thermal transference from the outside to the inside jumps the cavity insulation if you like so you get that around window frames you get that just around the edges and if you've got a high level of moisture in the house in other words you've got humidity in the house you know you know extractor fans aren't doing the job people are breathing obviously that's there now moisture so in a bedroom at night for example you've got all that moisture that's built up from two people breathing it's drifting around and obviously as it finds a cold spot like around the edge of the window frame it forms there now why it should have formed around this socket the only thing I can think about there is that there's a bit of cavity insulation missing because when they blow that in it is a bit hit-and-miss and if you get a void what you get is a warm wall and then you get one little point which is cold and on that cold spot the the moisture will convince so I don't think if he looks on the outside of where that socket is it doesn't look like there's anything on the outside which should be causing that damp on the inside so it's got two chances one that it's coming down from around the window or the other is condensation now if it's condensation the interesting thing to do would be to get a couple of you know bond there's little moisture traps put those in you can get them from Tesco's or where anywhere just put them on the windowsill and see how much moisture they gather over the course of 24 hours and that will give you a clue as to how much humidity is in the house because I'm thinking that what he needs there is a bit of ventilation he needs to get rid of some of that moisture from within the house but we don't know this so rather than jump to conclusions and go down the wrong path what does let's prove this first of all let's let's have a look at the humidity in the house and let's try and find out whether it is at a high level and if it is a higher level try to cure that try to get some good extractor fans in there open those windows get a bit of insulation in there don't try and clean it off with bleach by the way because bleach apparently is hard to scopic it will attract new moisture so even though it gets rid of the ugly black mold it will attract new moisture in this place so use a use a propriety fungicidal wash Liz Richards wants to put a level transition decking the what's the outside deck into be exactly the same level so floor so it's got a nice transition through I understand that a lot of people want that the first thing is he's worried about them which is quite right because you got a damp proof course out there and you shouldn't bridge to them of course you should actually stay six inches below the damper of course to stop any splash up from coming over the top having said that we've got cavity walls now of those so if the outside skin gets a little bit of a soaking it doesn't always mean that the inside starts to get rising them he's got a nice gully there he's showing us a gully so he can put in what they call a bit of a code rain there are other makes available but that's a drain a sort of slotted channel if you like with a mesh over the top now you can get this in stainless door and you can also get it in plastic plastic and your can also get a very nice one which has just got a little groove in it so you hardly see it at all but the idea is that any water that comes close to the house is taken away at that point other than that what you need to do is to put down some weed barrier geotextile they call it and just put that down to stop any weeds from growing up through the decking and then you can either just put their little pads on to why I like to do it's just put small holes if you like in the ground and there may be a bit of plastic pipe and then just put a bit of concrete into those so you make lots of little stilts now if you do them out of concrete rather than out of timber you don't have any rot issues with them and what I then do is I used usually put just a little bit of damper of course over the top of that concrete pad and then put the timber onto the top of there there is another way of doing it with jacking screws which are screws which you just placed into the concrete and then when they're set you just wind them up and down and the great thing about those is that you've got a little bit of adjustment you can make sure that all your levels are absolutely perfect before you go now if you're using composite decking there's an awful lot of this around nowadays but you need to decide what composite decking you're going to use before you start now for anybody doesn't know what composite decking is it's a non wood version of decking so it doesn't rot and so on very good pretty expensive but one of the things you've got to watch out for is how much support you need because where as you can get away with 400 millimeter centers on your joists with a wooden deck on some of that composite decking you've got to close up those joists to 300 millimeters which is a foot so because they haven't got quite the same structural strength as some of the timber you need to put in more supports so the worst thing is if you built the whole of the structure first the framework and then you've decided which deck and you're going to get a new saw I'll know I need to put in 300 millimetres centres on the timber and you wouldn't have enough support for it so it's very important that you work all that out before you start do a little sketch of it make sure you'd know exactly where you're going with it and make sure when you cut the decking that you make sure that the ends are supported over a joist so you haven't got any free flying bits in the middle which you sometimes see people doing they're just they just I think because they don't want to waste any decking they just randomly put them in in lengths and sometimes they're not properly supportable if you'd all that then there's no reason why you shouldn't have a perfectly good decking but you've got to think about that drainage issue and as I say the weed barrier is also essential because life will become a misery for you if you have weeds growing up through so now we've got a question from Jim Kane and Jim has just recently moved from Atlanta to Ely in Cambridge so that's a hell of a shock to the system isn't it I reckon I don't know I've never been to Atlanta but anyway there he is in Ely and he's getting to grips with English building he said he's done a lot of work on houses in the States but it doesn't know an awful lot about British building if you like first thing is hot water system he's not getting much pressure he's got pumped it's very noisy and he wants to put some more showers in better showers and he's saying I don't know what the solution is but I'm thinking maybe I can put in an unvented cylinder should he do that is that the best option well it is Jim but it's not a given that you've got enough flow and pressure so what the first thing you've got to do is to carry out the flow and pressure test and see what kind of water pressure and flow rate you've got coming into the house and you can talk to your local water company up there and see if they'll assist you in this and tell you what you've got one thing I would say is always check that the stopcocks are fully open the one in the street as well as the one into your house I've been to a house where they suffered for years with low flow rate on their water and there just are so nightmare nothing works very fast you know and they they put up with it for years and years and I thought I'll just have a look and I just went out into the the road into the street the path if you like and got my stopcock key out and I found that I've got three complete turns on the stopcock in the street and lo and behold in the house suddenly they got lovely flow of water that had never had before and honestly you know the lady almost kissed me as you didn't but there you go so one so check that out first chip have a look at your flow and your pressure you can do a test on the pressure static pressure with a little pressure gauge and also just fill a bucket up see how long it takes to fill it up and how many litres a minute you've got coming in there the other thing he's saying and I can understand this if you live in Ely he's saying that the water is incredibly hard there and it is it's an angular water I guess up there I don't know but but it is it's nasty old stuff so he's saying he's not sure what he should do about this a water softener or reverse osmosis unit in there now there are two different things the water softener is for softening the water that makes it all lovely and no one makes all of the lava you know the soap lather up well and makes your hair soft in your skin nice and everything else and that's a very good thing but the reverse osmosis thing it's a filter for the taste of the water now if you're worried about the taste of the water in other words if you've been buying bottled water then you might want to look at a reverse osmosis filter which is a very efficient water filter as an addition but there are two different things that some people confuse this and they say you know sometimes it's the fault of the people selling these things that they've said to people oh you know this is like a water softener as well and of course it does nothing to soften the water it filters out some of the stuff sure enough but it still leaves you with with hard water so those two things separate but both worth doing in that area so yeah I think you're not gonna get away if you're used to a nice quality of water you're not gonna get away with it without doing their or wouldn't go for one of these magnets or something like that because they won't give you think they they help in terms of reducing scale in your boiler but they don't do anything to soften the water really so it's always the water softener which is the sodium based thing so now we've got a question from Jimmy and Jimmy's a builder and he doesn't wants to use his real name because obviously you know why his saying that is experiencing a lot of cracks in the ceilings when he's putting up new ceilings he finds that off for a while he's getting his hairline cracks along them and he's having to go back and he said it's not only him but a lot of builders are experiencing this problem when I used to do a lot of loft conversions I'd always say to the customer that in around six months time they would have to get a decorator in and they would have to go around and they would have to fill in the words little hairline cracks and so on now the reason I said that is not because we didn't do a good job screaming the joints but because the timber was invariably wet you're doing a roof structure or something like that you've got what is sometimes soaking wet timber it's stored outside so you're putting it into that building and as you're fixing it all together and you're bolting it all up its height up but nuts and its really tight you go back there a week later and you can get another cup of four turns on the on the nuts it's an indication of just how much moisture is running out of those Timbers so if you're trying to get the job done fairly quickly as people want you in and out from the loft conversion you haven't got time to let that timber dry out before you start plaster boarding so the timber shrinks and no amount of scrim join this is the fiberglass tape they use between the two sheets have passed of all no amounts of that scrim will stop that cracking some people just are yet I didn't use scrim but you'll find they do and that scrim will tear just like that what's gonna stop it you know if you think about it you've got a piece of timber that's drying out and it wants to move apart and you're trying to stop it with a bit of fiberglass tape it's not gonna happen so you either let the timbers dry up completely before you start doing this or my solution is that you leave a little bit of a gap a penny a penny joint as I would call it between each piece of pass the board when you fix it rather than butting it up and that allows you to get a bit of plaster in behind the scrim as well as on top of it now a lot of people but those joints up they put the scrim tape over the top of it and then they passed on to it so if you think about it you've got three millimeters of pasture on that joint at best quite honestly a lot of the time and it's really not enough to cover the joint back in the day when we used to use Hessian scrim which in my opinion is a hell of a lot better it was thicker it was like sacking and if you try to take it like old buildings if you're going to build into which were built sort of 50 years ago and you start doing renovations on them and you've got to take a ceiling down it's been done with Hessian scrim you have you find you have to actually it's hair the board's apart is really difficult to get them apart so in my opinion using the Hessian scrims it used to be and it's not around anymore you can't even buy it but what you used to do then is used to put a layer of a coat of plaster on the joint it wasn't a self-adhesive scrim as they are now so you put a coat of plaster on that joint then you would bed in your Hessian scrim into that pasture and then as that went off you would put your top coat of plaster on so you built up a thicker joint on that that on the joints between the boards and sometimes you can see them sometimes we look across the ceiling you can see where the joints gone slightly thicker over the joins and then it's thinned out but if you're a good plaster you get over that you don't have that problem but again it's one of those things in the modern age they're just using a bit of self-adhesive scrim the timbers are where the boards are butted up so it's a very thin coat of pasture over there added so there and I don't know whether this is true or not but I'm going to do a bit of investigation with British gypsum and also the canal who may pass the ports and see if they've got anything to add to this because what's also happening is that we're not getting pure gypsum in the past the board anymore we're getting a lot of recycled material from power stations things like that we're also getting recycled past the board you know when you take it pass the ball down to the recycling plant now a lot of that is finding its way back into products so who knows who knows what that this happened to past of all in recent years maybe and I don't notice I'm not saying this so let's have your input on this tradesmen out there pastors out there and I think that there may be some different characteristics in the past of all obviously the plasterboard has got to dry out if it gets damp if it's been stored in a shed or somewhere where it's going a little bit damp it will contract and you can look up the coefficients of thermal expansion on pass the ball and you can see that is about on on a long ceiling you might get about three millimeters of expansion and contraction on that length now interestingly the other thing is that we're also having bigger rooms now because we're doing all these knock throughs rather than having small rooms where you wouldn't necessarily notice that little bit of shrinkage in the plasterboard because it may take place around the edges now because you've got a long run or you've got a much longer ceiling so if you think about it if you've got a ceiling that's about 20 feet long say now sorry to use old measurements but if you if you look at something that's 20 30 feet long then you can understand that there's likely to be more scope for cracks in a ceiling like that than there is in the short one so that's just my important I'd love to have your input anybody wants to add something to this and we do a little bit more investigation on it [Music]

Channel: Skill Builder

Views: 36,533

Rating: 4.952239 out of 5

Keywords: Level Decking, Cracked Lead, Damp Walls, water pressure low in house, water pressure booster, damp walls how to fix, damp walls in old houses, damp walls in bedroom, damp walls in house, lead flashing repair, lead flashing under window sill, Fungicidal Wash, Sandtex, Unibond Aero, composite decking, cracked ceilings what to do, cracked ceiling drywall repair, cracked ceiling repair, cracked ceiling paint repair

Id: 380FzPfSwYI

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2019