Curiouser and Curiouser!!!! You guys are really making me wonder what is in our loft! When we moved in, half the bathroom ceiling was peeling from damp (well, saturation actually!). Damp patches extended into the kitchen and hallway ceilings / upper parts of the walls, though not to the extent of peeling paint. The repair guys came and found a tile missing off the roof. They replaced it, peeked in the loft (head through the hatch!) and declared the missing tile was the cause. We took their word for it that nothing else untoward was going on........ I do hope they were right - I dont fancy sticking my head in that wee hole! To be fair, the ceiling does seem to have since dried out and the repair guys have painted the affected ceilings/walls with special paint. One or two small patches in the bathroom have started showing through again, but I gather damp is a nightmare to cover up without it coming back through.
We assume there is a tank of some nature in the loft. The property is around 50+ years old and we know that a new central heating system was installed just prior to us moving in. We guess thats when the open fireplace was blocked off.
Don, we too have softer-than-a-babies-bottom water in the sunny South West! I also thought that the higher pH would be better for my mollies so I tried to "acclimatise" the tank to the tap pH. For a couple of weeks, when doing a water change, I slowly added one bucket straight from the tap (correct temperature & dechlorinated of course!). A couple of hours later, I slowly added another bucket. Another couple of hours, I slowly added the third bucket and finally the fourth bucket another couple of hours later. Blow me, the tank still came out at pH 7.4
I concluded that trying to mess with the pH like that was worse than keeping it at the 7.4 its been stable at for the last 2
1/2 years. Thats when I decided to let the water stand, allowing it to drop to 7.4 before using it in the tank.
Really, it was only the black molly (Dreckly) that would strongly object to the water. The slightest thing out of the ordinary for her and she would break out in mould (saprolegnia). She was one of the two that died last Monday
SteveS, your post about unpressurised central heating lost me. Sorry