A J Winter

Traditional Builders & Property Maintenance
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26 February

Breathability (what does it all mean?)
Breathability of mortars and plasters is a term much used and much loved amongst the building conservation classes, but to the newly initiated period property homeowner it can be as clear as mud.

Unlike Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), the ugly, dead, life sucking grey cement we see everywhere these days, lime mortar allows any moisture trapped inside a building to evaporate through its porous structure. Moisture such as rainwater that may have entered externally through cracks or tiny fissures in the wall, or moisture caused internally by central heating systems, dishwashers, tumble dryers, washing machines etc. and through our own body heat.

Trapped moisture can cause a rake of problems depending on the degree of penetration - rising damp, falling damp, degredation of internal timber lintels and roof joists, flaky paintwork, crumbling plasterwork, uneven floors, and good old fashioned mould to name a few.

In new build houses we can see this problem occuring even with the addition of cavity walls and damp proof courses - moisture will out, or rather will find it's own way in!

Over the past 6-7 decades we've thought that the answer was to use rigid, impermeable barriers to keep out the rainwater - OPC, tanking, water-proof paints etc., not realising that we're trapping moisture inside the structure, that it has to go somewhere that it doesn't just disappear. We forgot what our forebears knew all too well. That lime is a form of eco-system in microcosm, that lime allows the free flow of moisture in a controlled and regulated way.

Do the right thing for your building by using lime mortars and it will look after you for years to come.
AJW




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Dulce et decorum est…..


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