Sat on a hot tin roof

Today, I’ve moved into the gutter. It’s a pleasant place, with good views, and excellent drainage.
Many Australian houses seem to have a problem with damp: mine included. There also seems to be corresponding connection between most Australian home-owners and their hatred of vines or climbing plants, which is odd, as the two are totally separate issues.

There is no doubt that one of the most effective transformations of any building is a covering of green foliage which periodically erupts in blossom. Even the most ugly 1960s Baulkham Hills eyesore fake Spanish disaster can have the chocolate-box aesthetic if adorned with the right plant life. Incongruous extensions mellow under a facade of greenery. In autumn, a house covered with flaming red Virginia creeper takes some beating. The long star-like leaves turn from green to stunning reds and purples at the time most other plants are starting to fade into the background. No less an authority than the Royal Horticultural Society recommends carefully chosen creeper. Wisteria for Regency Houses, Virginia Creeper for those with a Victorian aura, and hanging bunches of grapes for those moments when you want wine, and want it out of the window.

However, builders seem to have a hatred of the stuff. Quite often developers take thousands of pounds off the value of rambling Victorian buildings, covered with a carefully trained ancient wisteria, draped with delicate lilac lanterns, by removing the best feature to reveal an unrelenting drab grey exterior. From eye-catching to eyesore in an afternoon – much, it must be said, to the horror of local residents.

The same builders will often claim a miracle cure for damp, just by burning down the vegetation. It won’t, but that doesn’t stop them charging thousands for the privilege, and then thousands more to add in their next miracle cure of chemical damp proofing that rarely works.

The worst enemy of old houses is we humans - it's generally what we fail to understand about the building that causes most of the problems and make you think you have to Damp Proof it. In recent years, Rising Damp specialists and building surveyors recommending damp treatment have caused massive, and in many cases, irreparable damage to old buildings through their incompetence. Don't use them, particularly in Australia where most surveyors – as I proved in the postings from mid August – have little idea either about damp, creeper, or the construction of any building pre-1970s. It gave me a good laugh to read the surveyors’ report that damp in the house was probably as a result of the ivy on the walls.

Except there is none. Instead, there’s lots of Virginia Creeper. Gallons on it, climbing so high up the wall, it’s reached chimney level. Virginia creeper or five-leaved ivy (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is a woody vine native to south eastern Canada. It is a noble plant, reaching heights of 20 to 30 m in the wild. Because the vine adheres to the surface by disks rather than penetrating roots, it doesn’t harm the building or masonry but keeps the building cooler by shading the wall surface during the summer, saving money on air conditioning.

It does however have the slight drawback that it loves gutters: they are at just the right height for it to bask in the warm Australian winters. And in doing so it successfully blocks the whole thing up.

Which explains why I’ve spent the best part of a day 20 feet up a ladder, on a baking hot day, while the lightning forks down around me, and the rain descends in torrents. Here it’s clear what the problem is. It overflows those gutters, and comes tumbling down the wall – coincidentally causing all those damp problems , that the builders assure you can only be cured by turning the building into an eyesore, and by spending a lot of money.

Rather to my surprise I didn’t get struck by lightning, and lived to tell the tale of a day in the merde, slowly scooping handfuls of the 20 years worth of filth out of the gutter. It was to the top of the brim, and had small trees growing in it – I’ve now got enough vegetation to keep my compost heap running for a year, gutters that flow beautifully clear.

Plus, a cure for damp that didn’t cost me a penny.