If you can see daylight through a newly built wall, then the brickie needs sacking. Yes, the idea of cavity walls was to stop damp penetration, but my brothers factory, an old chapel, was built around 1878, has cavity walls, and impervious bricks. a new build wall that lets water through to this extent is not fit for purpose, no two ways about it! NHBC, on certain sites (not all by any means), have set new standards in piss-poor building. I was at one recently where we had to chop in plaster depth boxes, because a wall built across to divide two rooms had been started from either end, without a line, and the plasterers were putting 50mm on one side of a doorway, and a skim on the other to try to create a flat wall, another occasion, on the same site, the NHBC inspector had pointed out to the builder that the hip board on a newly tiled garage roof, finished in mid air, and the roof was already sagging! As an electrical engineer, I have worked in alliance with the building trade for much of my working life, and also done a huge amount of brickwork myself, and also built a five bed house, from footings (put down on the hottest day of the last century!) to ridge tiles. walls may get damp over time, but walls that let water through, or bricks that absorb water to that extent are not fit for purpose, but probably very cheap!! I have explained how to cure the problem in my earlier post, but generally we have to stop accepting poor quality work and poor materials as being acceptable, they are not, and we should shout it from the rooftops!
