Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ
Questions we hear the most.
If your wall does not match these answers, send a photo with the quote form.
Contact usRising damp is groundwater in the masonry, usually with a tide mark and salts low on the wall. Penetrating damp is rainwater, often worse after wet weather and at any height, including ceilings and chimney breasts. Condensation is moist room air on a cold surface: streamed windows, mould in corners and behind furniture, worse in winter. A metre on the surface alone does not separate them. The survey uses readings, salts and the outside of the building.
The survey covers the wet rooms and the outside walls that serve them: moisture readings, a note of salts where plaster has failed, ground levels, gutters, pointing and the damp proof course line. Thermal imaging is used when the stain does not explain itself. You get a written damp type and what should happen next. It is a damp survey for treatment, not a valuation and not a full building survey.
The written quote moves with the length and thickness of wall, how much salt-damaged plaster has to come off, access and scaffolding, whether a cavity is bridged, how many wet rooms need extract, and whether a cellar has to be kept habitable. A survey of a flat is not priced like a cellar conversion. We do not publish a single package price because the damp type changes the work.
Wiping mould, running a bathroom extract and stopping clothes being dried in a sealed room can control condensation. Shop injection cream, tanking paint and waterproof emulsion do not stop rising damp or rain coming through failed pointing. If the damp type is uncertain, treat the diagnosis as the professional job. The wrong product leaves the wall wet and the new plaster fails.
After a damp proof course or a leak, masonry dries slowly. New salt-resistant plaster and paint wait for moisture readings, often months on a thick solid wall, sooner on a lightly wetted surface. Painting or skim-coating early traps moisture and the mark returns. The treatment record says when decoration is reasonable.
No, if the wall is still being wetted. Damp paint and anti-mould spray hide a stain or kill surface growth for a short time. They do not close a gutter, a bridged cavity, a missing extract or groundwater in the brick. Use them only after the source has been stopped and the wall is dry.
No. A low mark can be a path, a patio or render bridging the damp proof course, a leaking radiator pipe, or plaster that is holding old salts. Rising damp is confirmed when the readings and salts fit groundwater and the other paths have been ruled out. We do not inject a wall on the strength of a tide mark alone.
The damp proof course is a line in the wall that should sit above outside ground level. Soil, a new patio, render, a ramp or debris in a cavity can connect wet ground to the brick above that line. The stain looks like rising damp. The repair is often to lower the ground or clear the bridge, not to inject a second course.
A wet patch under a bathroom, beside a radiator, or that appears overnight from a sound ceiling is often a plumbing leak. We will say so. Stopping the pipe is plumber's work. We dry the masonry and replace failed plaster once the leak has been stopped. Structural drying does not include the pipe repair.
Where we install a treatment, the guarantee is the one written for that system, up to 30 years for installations that carry that term. It covers the system we fitted. It does not cover decoration, a gutter you still need to clear, a new patio that bridges the wall later, or a leak that started after we left.
Help
We are here to look at the damp.
Describe the room, the height of the mark, and whether the wall is solid or cavity.
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