[Question] Wall behaving weirdly

Yes, useless title, but that's because I honestly don't know what I'm looking at.
In our new house, there's a wall. It's the dividing wall with our neighbor's house. As far as I know, it's concrete. And it was painted. I'm 100% sure that, when we moved in, it was smooth. And now, there's these things (see pictures, finger for size comparison). They look like blisters, with the paint coming off if you brush it even lightly. OK, so they're not huge, but they're in pretty much the middle of what was an empty, light wall, so they're quite noticeable. I was wondering if it was moisture, but it feels dry, and there's nothing fluid-like nearby - the kitchen's upstairs, but there's no pipes on that side, just the stove and the fridge - and the wall behind those is bone dry. I was worried it might be concrete rot, but that doesn't really look like this from what I've seen. It doesn't smell moldy... Anyone here have a better guess/idea/suggestion about what might be going on with the wall? Just a case of "wrong type of paint for the surface"? Something hideous that'll take thousands of euros to sort-of fix? :/IMG_20170320_232907.jpg IMG_20170320_232914.jpg IMG_20170320_232921.jpg
 

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Pretty sure it was either painted while wet or is experiencing moisture from the other side, especially if you like to keep your side cooler than your neighbor does his side.
You should be able to strip the offending wall and then paint it with something like DryLok as a base coat to keep it from happening (and keep all the moisture on your neighbor's side).

--Patrick
 
Bad paint job. They either used the wrong paint or didn't clean the wall well enough. If you just rent bring it up to the owner/landlord and have them fix it.

If you want it don't right you pretty much have to strip off all the bad, clean the wall, and use an appropriate moisture sealing indoor concrete paint.

You could just flake off the bad and spot paint but it's only going to get worse over the rest of the wall. It's cheaper than doing it right, though...
 
Update: while I was sure there was no water pipes in that wall, I never really checked for *heating*. It's an outside wall, there's technical chutes both fore and aft, there's no radiator in that hallway - basically no reason why there would be a heating pipe there. Fast forward to today - the heating was on far too hard for my taste, gf being home alone.... And a part of that wall is hot from the ceiling to the floor. The maniac who installed the heating system in here put a pipe from the heater in the attic straight down, behind the kitchen counter, through that wall, all the way to the basement, to then have the pipes come out of the floor in the bedroom. The whole pipe's behind the plaster so no easy way to reach... But I'm almost 99%sure that vertical pipe is the problem.
 
Could be a boiler heating setup, which would make more sense than ducting because the air and wall shouldn't get hot enough using ductwork to damage the paint, but the water pipes in a boiler system might get hot enough.
 
Follow up for all....0 of you who probably care, but also all 2 of you who will read anything around here :p :

So the expert came and found...No leak. There's plenty of water in the wall, but there's no pressure loss, the moisture is drying up, and there doesn't seem to be any new water coming in. However, we now discovered that a few months ago, the previous owner came running to the neighbour because there was water coming through the wall in the kitchen - the floor above where my wall's wet now. It turned out to be from the neighbour's roof, as the drain was blocked by a wallet (don't ask me how you get a wallet stuck in your roof drain.). So it seems this is the water from back then that's now coming out a floor lower, and it's slowly drying up. Which is....weird. And not what I was expecting. And I'm not sure I'm 100% sold on water just happening to be in that spot 4 months after the facts. But, here we are. Neighbour's insurance, here we come. The leak in our roof turns out not to be from the roof, either - it's from a crack in the wall, where rain can enter when there's heavy wind from the wrong quarter. And we *did* find a leak in the basement, which we didn't know was there. But that's small, easily contained, and unrelated to any damage anywhere.
 

Dave

Staff member
A wallet in the drain? And your water damage is from the neighbor? That's...weird.
 
Related story:

For 2 months, I've been dealing with a leak from my upstairs master bathroom. Every time one of us takes a shower, water dripped from up there onto my kitchen ceiling.

I've had three guys come out a total of 6 times for a cost of $650 to re-grout, re-caulk, and seal everything up. I hired these guys cause I'm not a handy man. And my wife always complains that I need to hire experts to come do shit right.

One week ago, I pulled all their caulk out, and while I was drying everything in the wall with shop towels, I went to Ace, bought 6 tubes of 100% silicone sealant, and sealed the space behind the tile wall (underneath where the caulk was) like I was trying to protect the Sekret Tablets of Scientology™. When that was dry, I caulked again. Nary a leak. For about $8.00 in silicone (since I didn't use even half of it).

Take that, doubtful wife. So far, I've fixed 11 electrical outlets, the kitchen sink (with sprayer), the garbage disposal, a toilet flush and fill assembly, a bad hot water heater element, and a busted shower handle (which was in a different bathroom than the leak, before any of your smartasses say anything ;) ). And now, this. You'd think she'd start believing in me eventually.

Incidentally, there's a reason they call this shit "builder's grade"...Who knows what the hell I'll fix in the next 4 years.
 
Take that, doubtful wife.
I can't tell you how much I've learned about home repair simply because I couldn't/wouldn't spend a couple grand for a handyman/repairman. Heck, I installed my own hot water heater (though I did have my dad's help to physically wrestle it into place).

--Patrick
 
My parents are handy as shit, and I wish I could do half the shit they can. I will trial and error a lot of things, but I'm terrified of fucking with anything that I might not be able to undo without professional help.
 
I'm terrified of fucking with anything that I might not be able to undo without professional help.
Well at the time it was "Fix it myself because paying a professional will literally bankrupt me," so what did I have to lose?

--Patrick
 
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