House is terrace about 200 years old with solid walls.
There's a small section of external wall, about 1.6m wide, about two thirds below ground, joining a section of side wall shared with neighbour about 1m wide. I'm on a hill so neighbour's basement floor is about 30cm higher up.
Damp was showing through the plaster, blistering paint, rusty screws.... I've stripped off the plaster back to the bricks. Looks like previous job on the front wall had simply been to plaster directly to the brick, in some places up to two inches thick. The solution on the side wall seems to have been to put a layer of cement, presumably water-proofed, on top of the original lime plaster, then skimmed.
My original plan was to coat bricks with pitch paint then put up thermal plasterboard with a vapour check lining using plasterboard adhesive. But my worry is that the previous approach of sealing in the damp hasn't done the bricks any good. Some are very pastie. I don't have water flowing in, it's just that the bricks are slightly damp in some places. They have dried quite a lot over the week since walls were stripped.
I was wondering if, rather than sealing the bricks with pitch, it would be better to vent the cavity between the plasterboard and bricks to outside or inside or both, to allow any moisture to disperse.
I've trawled through the posts about tanking-out basements and there isn't a definitive solution. Seems the consensus prefers to allow the walls to breathe or to seal from the outside. A builder doing a basement down the road is sealing inside with pitch.
Appreciate views and advice from anyone who has tackled similar problem.
There's a small section of external wall, about 1.6m wide, about two thirds below ground, joining a section of side wall shared with neighbour about 1m wide. I'm on a hill so neighbour's basement floor is about 30cm higher up.
Damp was showing through the plaster, blistering paint, rusty screws.... I've stripped off the plaster back to the bricks. Looks like previous job on the front wall had simply been to plaster directly to the brick, in some places up to two inches thick. The solution on the side wall seems to have been to put a layer of cement, presumably water-proofed, on top of the original lime plaster, then skimmed.
My original plan was to coat bricks with pitch paint then put up thermal plasterboard with a vapour check lining using plasterboard adhesive. But my worry is that the previous approach of sealing in the damp hasn't done the bricks any good. Some are very pastie. I don't have water flowing in, it's just that the bricks are slightly damp in some places. They have dried quite a lot over the week since walls were stripped.
I was wondering if, rather than sealing the bricks with pitch, it would be better to vent the cavity between the plasterboard and bricks to outside or inside or both, to allow any moisture to disperse.
I've trawled through the posts about tanking-out basements and there isn't a definitive solution. Seems the consensus prefers to allow the walls to breathe or to seal from the outside. A builder doing a basement down the road is sealing inside with pitch.
Appreciate views and advice from anyone who has tackled similar problem.
