D.I.Y and Trades

Quoted from ginnywings

That's a job I've done countless times, although the sleeper walls were still in situ and just required a dpm and wooden wallplate bedding on.

I once moved into a house, only to find a big hole in the floor which had been hidden by a rug and a piano on viewing. I started to investigate and 4 hours later, I had no floors or joists in either the front room or living room. Bit of a nightmare to say the least.

I have to say that the labour does sound a tad high to me, as does the materials cost, but I'm a bit out of touch with prices nowadays being semi retired and only taking on small jobs nowadays.

When you say the sleeper walls have one brick; do you mean one brick in height, which is unusual, or one brick single skin wall a few bricks high?

Quoted from Sandford1981

4 sets spread evenly across the width of the room consisting of one brick in height and 18 in length.

Quoted from chaos33

Junior doctor £14 p/h x 8  = £122 per day. Just saying.

Quoted from Mappers

Tbf you can make decent money from trades , I did a few bits to help a painter and decorator and then  brickie out a good few years ago was good crack and a decent handful of actual cash at the end in your hand .

It's suprising the amount of people you talk to now ,who went down the academic route who  wish they had learnt a trade instead (or maybe that's just the people I talk to ) .

Quoted from ginnywings

Righto!

18 bricks is 4 mts, so I presume it's a room roughly 4mts x 3mts.

Not a lot of brickwork and not a big room, so it does seem at the top end price wise to me.

Quoted from ginnywings

Righto!

18 bricks is 4 mts, so I presume it's a room roughly 4mts x 3mts.

Not a lot of brickwork and not a big room, so it does seem at the top end price wise to me.

Quoted from Sandford1981

Just had another quote for the same job and the Labour is  £750 which to me is much more like it and what I would say is fair.

Quoted from ginnywings

Nice one.

I'll waive my 10% consultation fee this time.

Quoted from chaos33

Junior doctor £14 p/h x 8  = £122 per day. Just saying.

Quoted from ginnywings

Afraid not, no.

Done a few injection damp courses years back, which is relatively easy to do and you can hire the gear.

However, you first need to make sure you actually have rising damp as there are other reasons why a wall can be damp. Bridged damp course, poor ventilation, blocked air bricks etc. Beware unscrupulous builders who will charge you a fortune to 'fix' a problem that may not even exist and may not be cured with a damp course.

You need to bear in mind that damp proof remedies don't always work and that the work involved is very messy and disruptive because of the need to remove all the render and plaster up to a metre up the wall.

An effective and cheaper solution can be tanking, where you remove the render, paint the walls with a liquid membrane and re-render and plaster, with a waterproofing agent added to the render.

Then there is the traditional method of physically removing a course of bricks and fitting a DPC before replacing said bricks. This is done in small sections for obvious reasons.

I had quite a bad wall in my own house and I tackled it by covering it over with panelling made from water resistant MDF and painted. The damp is still there but you can't see it and it was done in 2 days.