WCP4567

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Wimborne.

June 13^th. 1910

Prof. R. Meldola

My dear Meldola

I enclose you a bit of plaster off a wall from my old house at Parkstone, & shall be obliged if you can let one of your students make a rough analysis, for the sole purpose of ascertaining if the said plaster contains any deliquescible material (such as salt) adequate to cause water to stand on the surface & trickle down in very wet weather.. The facts are [2] as follows — The House is let on lease to a Dr. (M.D.) who lives in it with 3 sisters, & has had it for 8 years. For the last 2 years, he has complained of excessive damp in two underground rooms — my study which you perhaps remember, and a back room which was used as a servant’s bedroom..

I got an architect to examine it, & he suggested two methods, either make an "area" all round 10 feet deep! — or to insert a slate damp course which it seemed had not been done when built as the rooms were used as cellars.

However as the damp was only [3] in places, I tried one of the silica solutions, warranted to cure all damp walls — with the highest testimonials, &c &c. This was put on, besides fresh plaster in places — after a few months ^{it was} as bad as ever! Then I got a builder I was employing — & he found that the rain water stack-pipes were choked just below the surface, where the worst damp was, inside. We thought we had got it then. They were taken up relaid & renewed ^{traps put in &c.} — and also a slate damp course laid around both rooms, by taking out ^{a course of} the inner walls, brick by brick — clearing out the hollow wall &c. No damp was found! This was 6 months ago the two operations had cost me [4]¹ about £20 — & now the walls are as bad as ever, even worse! The wet comes in patches not all over, — and sometimes on the inner walls! To day Will has been there with another builder, and they have had the plaster cut away in one of the dampest places, quite wet in fact, on the surface — yet inside it seemed quite dry, and the brick surface was also quite dry — (To make sure a hole was cut into the hollow wall and that was quite dry too.) We have heard that sometimes plasterers put salt in the plaster! Or use sea-sand. — The useless work I have done has already cost me about £20 — I want to find the cause, so as not to do more blundering. Can you kindly help me.

^{Neither rooms were seriously damp during the 11 years we lived there. That is the mystery.2}

^{The brown side of the plaster had the "silica" solution on 2} coats ^{— the wet came out!3}

Yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]