Whyteleafe — Building Maintenance

Property Maintenance in Whyteleafe (CR3)

Whyteleafe runs along a dry valley cut through the North Downs, and its houses climb both sides. On a plot that steep, a great deal comes back to one question: where the rainwater goes once it has left the roof. Get that right and much of the rest looks after itself.

Get a free quote Call 01883 337 700

Where the water ends up on a sloping plot

A downpipe on a level street discharges into a gully and that is the end of it.

On a valley side it is rarely so simple. Water leaving a downpipe on higher ground has somewhere to go, and if the gully is silted, the ground has been built up over the years or a path falls back towards the house, it goes into the wall instead. The signs turn up indoors long before anyone looks outside — a stain low down on an internal wall, a skirting that never dries out, plaster that keeps blowing in the same corner. The fix is usually cheap and usually outside: clear the gully, cut the ground back below the damp course, put a proper fall on the path, extend or reroute a discharge. What is expensive is redecorating the same wall three times without doing any of it.

Retaining walls that were built to hold ground

Sloping gardens here mean retaining walls, and an older one was often built with whatever was to hand. A retaining wall holds back not just soil but the water in it, so the parts that matter are the ones nobody looks at: the weep holes that let water through, the drainage behind, and the mortar joints doing the work. When a wall starts to lean, bulge or shed its pointing it is usually telling you that the drainage stopped working first. Brickwork repairs, repointing and clearing or forming weeps are the sort of job worth doing at the first sign rather than at the point the wall has to come down and go back up. We survey the wall, say plainly whether it is a repair or a rebuild, and price it as one or the other rather than starting a repair and discovering halfway through.

Solid walls, and why a repair has to breathe

The older Whyteleafe housing is solid-wall construction with no cavity, which changes how an external repair should be done.

A solid wall handles moisture by letting it move through and out again, so anything that seals the outside face — a hard cement patch, an impermeable coating over old brick — tends to push the damp somewhere else rather than stop it. Repairs on walls like these should breathe the way the original does.

More in Whyteleafe

Everything we do in Whyteleafe is on the Whyteleafe area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the building maintenance page.

Common questions

Q.01The damp patch is inside, so why are you looking outside?

Because on a sloping plot that is usually where it starts. A blocked gully, a raised path or a downpipe discharging against the wall will show up as an internal stain, and treating the plaster without fixing the outside only delays it.

Q.02Is a leaning garden retaining wall urgent?

It depends how far it has gone and what it is holding back. We would rather look at it early and tell you it can be repointed and drained than be called once it has moved far enough to need rebuilding. Ring the office on 01883 337 700 and we will come and look.

Q.03Do you take on small jobs, or only full projects?

Small jobs as well. Clearing and refixing guttering, a length of repointing, easing a door that has dropped — it is worth putting several together into one visit rather than calling someone out for each one.

Q.04My house has solid walls. Can they be repointed?

Yes, and it should be done in a mortar softer than the brick so the joint weathers rather than the brick face. Repointing an old solid wall in a hard modern mix causes damage that shows up a few winters later.

Q.05Who actually turns up to do the work?

The brickwork, carpentry, plastering and groundworks are done by SG's own team. Roofing, electrics and decorating are specialist trades, so those we bring in, price, run on site and stay answerable for.