Extension Prep Work

 Today the second-born and I did some work inside the conservatory in advance of the extension build.

In this particular corner there is a lot of moisture, a lot of mould and I wanted to see where it was coming from.

Armed with my shiny new moisture meter, I began investigating. First thing I checked was around the water pipes that go through the wall. These areas seemed fine. So I moved on to just following the moisture to it's source but that proved to be more confusing.

For a start the moisture is concentrated halfway up the wall. It's also mostly around the left side of the picture, furthest from the outside. There were high readings on the plaster, which is where all the mould was but no obvious origin.

Well, to my mind the only place it could be coming from is the wall. It's not in a good condition on the outside (years of leaky gutters saw to that) so I figured I'd strip the plaster off and test the wall behind it.

What I found confused me though. The wall was nice and dry. Then, looking at the layers I'd uncovered, I was even more confused... We had brick, paint, cement, paint, plaster and a final layer of paint. Surely that can't be good for the wall?! The cement and plaster clearly post-dated the conservatory. I suspect they were trying to hide all the damaged brick and screw holes.

Anyway, it's all gone now so we'll see if the wall dries out any better.

You may be wondering where the second-born comes into this story. Well, she sat with me throughout and asked me all about the things I was doing. She seemed genuinely interested. She also insisted on tidying up for me.