john rogers
New Member
Hi we have a victorian house with a lower ground floor set 4 or 5 feet into the ground - not a basement as such but still more subject to damp.
Some bright spark got the inside and outside of the walls clad in an inch of very waterproof cement about 10 years ago and inevitably they got damp inside - we're trying to rectify this by redoing the exterior rendering. We found a product called Prooftherm which ticked all the boxes - very highly breathable and with an added bonus of insulation. We've had the back wall stripped and rerendered in this by a local plasterer. It's had a profound impact and dried the walls right out humidity down etc - it looks like a great system.
Now Prooftherm leaves a cement like finish by design and for the front of the house we need a smooth finish - It's a lime based product and they have confirmed that we can simply have it skimmed in lime to achieve this. So we're looking for someone to take on the other two walls. Ideally we'd like to stick with the same product as it has worked as far as we're concerned, but it's a fairly new product in the UK market and everyone we've contacted say they'll only do it if they can use k-rend which is on paper a lot less good on the breathability front.
So is there anyone out there who wants to take this on, or point me in the direction of someone relatively local who might? It's probably about 40-50sqm in total and involves removing maybe 30sqm of cement, some of which is delicate as it's around a bay?
Why aren't we using the lad we used for the test wall? Well he's a great plasterer but not so brilliant at achieving good details on the outside so we're looking for someone with more experience withing with lime.
Some bright spark got the inside and outside of the walls clad in an inch of very waterproof cement about 10 years ago and inevitably they got damp inside - we're trying to rectify this by redoing the exterior rendering. We found a product called Prooftherm which ticked all the boxes - very highly breathable and with an added bonus of insulation. We've had the back wall stripped and rerendered in this by a local plasterer. It's had a profound impact and dried the walls right out humidity down etc - it looks like a great system.
Now Prooftherm leaves a cement like finish by design and for the front of the house we need a smooth finish - It's a lime based product and they have confirmed that we can simply have it skimmed in lime to achieve this. So we're looking for someone to take on the other two walls. Ideally we'd like to stick with the same product as it has worked as far as we're concerned, but it's a fairly new product in the UK market and everyone we've contacted say they'll only do it if they can use k-rend which is on paper a lot less good on the breathability front.
So is there anyone out there who wants to take this on, or point me in the direction of someone relatively local who might? It's probably about 40-50sqm in total and involves removing maybe 30sqm of cement, some of which is delicate as it's around a bay?
Why aren't we using the lad we used for the test wall? Well he's a great plasterer but not so brilliant at achieving good details on the outside so we're looking for someone with more experience withing with lime.
