Monday, March 20, 2006
Water leak in the Gite
Last week I finished all the plasterboard filling downstairs ready to start painting the gite downstairs. It's a bit of a daunting job because the kitchen, sitting area and dining room are one large space with very high ceilings. The walls are about 3.5m tall with exposed beams, so there is alot of cutting in around all the beams whilst working off ladders.
Whilst I was painting the sous-couche (undercoat), I noticed in the kitchen area where the sink is due to go quite a bit of dampness on the floor and at the base of some of the plasterboard. Very strange because the concrete floor has a waterproof membrane to prevent damp, so the only possible explaination was a leak in the kitchen plumbing. The plumber had finished his work about a week before and capped off the pipework for the kitchen waiting for me to fit it. Everything seemed OK.
However, after a bit of investigation, and removing a large section of plasterboard from the kitchen area in the gite revealed an unsoldered elbow on the copper pipe! Opps. The leak was pretty bad and had been flowing for about a week. All the water had flowed down behind the plasterboard and soaked into the concrete floor above the membrane. In places we could see water had risen up to the tiled floor and darkened the grount between the tiles. We hadn't noticed before as the floor is covered in tarpulins.
A fairly simple fix, but a bit of an issue trying to dry out the gite. To start the drying process I put an osillating fan in place and turned up the VMC to maximum to help extract the damp air. Fingers crossed it will dry out in time.
| 7:37:49 PM
Water leak in the Gite
