Buying a period property is the easy part. Working out what previous owners did to it, and which of those decisions is now causing the damp patch in the front room, is where most people get stuck. Norfolk has an enormous stock of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses, flint cottages, farmhouses and clay lump buildings, and a great many of them have spent the last fifty years being repaired with materials that don't suit them.
HD Building Services restores period property across Norfolk. We diagnose what's actually wrong before we quote, use materials appropriate to the age of the building, and are honest about what needs doing now versus what can wait. Around nine years of heritage experience, 5★ on Google, 10/10 on Checkatrade, and fully insured.
The properties we work on
- Georgian & Regency. Townhouses and villas with soft handmade brick, fine jointing, lath-and-plaster interiors and sash windows. Common in Norwich's older streets and market towns.
- Victorian & Edwardian. Terraces, semis and villas. Solid nine-inch walls, bay windows, slate or pantile roofs, and decorative brick and render detail worth keeping.
- Flint & brick cottages. The classic Norfolk cottage. Irregular walls, low ceilings, and mortar doing most of the structural work, and unforgiving of cement repairs.
- Farmhouses & outbuildings. Rural Norfolk farmhouses, cart lodges, stables and barns, including sympathetic conversion and structural stabilisation.
- Clay lump & earth build. South Norfolk's unfired clay block construction. Needs breathable render and limewash, and is at risk from cement.
- Listed property. Grade II and above, where consent and specification matter. More on listed building work →
The problems we find again and again
After a few hundred old buildings you start to see the same handful of causes behind most complaints. Almost all of them are the result of a well-meant modern repair.
Cement render and pointing holding damp in
By far the most common. A solid wall dries out through its surface. Wrap it in sand-and-cement render or hard pointing and the moisture has nowhere to go, so it moves inward and upward, showing up as damp patches internally and spalling brickwork externally. Stripping cement render and replacing it with lime is often the single repair that fixes a “damp problem” three previous contractors have failed to solve.
Misdiagnosed “rising damp”
Genuine rising damp is far rarer than the damp-proofing industry suggests. In old Norfolk houses the cause is usually something more mundane: external ground levels raised above the internal floor by a new patio or drive, a bridged or rendered-over air brick, a leaking gutter or downpipe, splash-back at the base of the wall, or plain condensation in a house that has been sealed up with modern windows. Injecting a chemical DPC into a solid wall rarely addresses any of those, and the hard waterproof render that gets applied with it usually makes things worse.
Trapped and decaying timber
Joist ends built into damp solid walls, bressummers and lintels concealed behind later plaster, and blocked underfloor ventilation are the usual routes to rot and beetle. We open up, assess properly, and splice or replace only what has actually gone rather than tearing out sound historic timber.
Structural movement and failed lintels
Old buildings move, and a good deal of the cracking we're asked about is long-settled and needs nothing more than monitoring and appropriate pointing. Some of it's active: failed timber or brick arch lintels over openings, corroded wall ties, spread roofs pushing walls out, or bulging rubble-filled walls. We'll tell you which one you have, and we'll say if it needs a structural engineer rather than a builder.
We don't quote for redecoration over a damp wall. If we can't explain why the defect is happening, we haven't finished looking. It's a slower start, but it's the difference between a repair and an expensive delay.
Making a period home warmer without wrecking it
Most people want an old house that's comfortable to live in, not a museum. That's doable. Every upgrade just has to keep the wall breathing.
- Breathable insulation. Wood fibre and lime-based insulating plasters on solid walls, rather than impermeable foam boards that trap moisture at the interface and cause hidden decay.
- Insulate the loft and the floor first. Almost always more heat saved per pound than solid wall insulation, and far lower risk to the building.
- Draught-proofing and secondary glazing. Repairing and draught-sealing original sashes with slim secondary glazing usually outperforms replacement units on both comfort and cost, and keeps the character. On a listed building it's often the only route that'll get consent.
- Sort out ventilation. Old houses were designed to be leaky. Seal one up without providing controlled ventilation and you swap a draught for condensation and mould.
- Route services thoughtfully. Chasing pipes and cables through historic fabric does permanent damage. There's nearly always a less destructive route if someone takes the time to find it.
- Lime plaster internally. On solid walls, haired lime plaster on lath or lime on masonry keeps the whole build-up breathable and looks right in the room.
How a restoration project runs
- Free site visit and assessment. We walk the property with you, look at what has been done before, and identify causes rather than symptoms.
- Priorities and phasing. Roof and rainwater goods first, then walls, then internal finishes. Getting water off and out of the building always comes before anything cosmetic. Plenty of clients phase work over a few years, and we'll help you sequence it sensibly.
- Clear itemised quote. Written specification, so you know what mortar, what render, what tiles. So does a conservation officer, if the property is listed.
- Consents where needed. We'll flag anything likely to need listed building consent, conservation area consent or building regulations approval before work starts.
- Work in occupied houses. Most of our restoration work happens around people still living there. Dust control, protection, and tidying up as we go.
- Aftercare. Advice on how to look after lime, when to expect it to weather in, and what to keep an eye on.