Rising Damp treatment / recommendations?

[Teabaglady]

Hi , the survey on our property has come back with rising damp and major work required I.e digging up floor and instalment of membrane etc. does anyone have experience of this? How can I find out how much the treatment will cost? We are in Oxfordshire .
Thanks in advance

[PigletJohn]

usually, "Rising Damp" is a chimera.

Google "Rising Damp Does Not Exist" and see who says so.

Chemical injection is fairly useless.

If there is damp, there will be a cause. The cause needs to be identified and corrected. A wrinkled local builder will be familiar with the common ones

e.g.
Earth or paving heaped against the side of a house raising the ground level above design height

Airbricks blocked

Paving sloping towards house leading rainwater to run towards it

Water leak, maybe under or in the floor

Dripping sink waste

Broken drains

Incompetently laid solid floor

Less common ones include house built on stream or side of hill that water runs down.

Whatever the cause, it has to be identified and corrected. Damp Proofing companies will tell you that you need to buy their damp proofing treatment, but if the cause is one that I have mentioned, it will not be cured, and careful reading of their guarantee will show that it does not guarantee against such causes and a recurrence of damp.

[MinimalistMommi]

These people are fab www.ukdamp.co.uk they sorted our house out when we had a retention put on our mortgage. If you have damp, water will be coming from somewhere and they help you sort it out the natural way with out chemical injection/tanking etc.

[OliviaBenson]

As others have said, find the cause and don't go to companies who are selling a product- you need an independent surveyor. Hope you get it sorted.

[Teabaglady]

Thanks for replies. So do I need a specific damp survey in addition to my structural survey ? If so, who would carry it out ?

[MinimalistMommi]

I would have one done, I used the company from the link above because someone recommended them on mumsnet. They came from London and it cost approx £250 for survey but it was worth every single penny because I knew they would tell me actual cause (they did) and how to rectify it (I needed more airbricks at front and a little channel thing built a back because the ground level had been made higher then it should have been. Before this we had been told that the house need tanking, which,in fact, it didn't. It was by chance from searching on mumsnet that I found the link!


Also, how old is your house? We have 1870's terraced cottage and some problems were being caused because lime plaster had been skimmed with modern gypsum plaster and then covered in thick wallpaper so the walls couldn't breath, any moisture that was there in bricks couldn't get out. Modern material on old materials can cause problems such as damp.

[Quangle]

Just searched for a thread on this. I have damp (which I assumed was rising damp although now it seems that is not a thing) in the semi-basement kitchen of my Georgian terrace.

It's coming up through both of the walls I share with my neighbours on either side of me. There's nothing in my house or theirs to cause it (no pipes against the wall that could be leaking for instance) so we assumed the walls themselves were pulling up damp from the earth beneath and because the house is so old, there's no treatment in the walls or beneath the walls. The floor of the basement is damp proofed but that stops at the walls - on both sides of the room, the wall itself seems to be the problem (or presumably the ground beneath the wall).

There's nothing on PigletJohn's list that would obviously be the cause in our case so I'm not sure what else could be the cause other than old houses built straight onto earth. Would the ukdamp.co.uk people mentioned be the right people to come and diagnose the problem? Or any other suggestions?

[MinimalistMommi]

Just messaged you Quangle

[PigletJohn]

underground walls are always damp. Lots of ventilation sometimes means that the water can dry out faster than it comes in, but usually not.

Most attempts to waterproof basements are done from the outside of the wall during construction, because the pressure of water and earth presses the treatment harder against the wall, rather than trying to push it off as happens if applied to the inside.

You can tank or line the inside of the wall, but you have to allow for drainage or pumping out of the water that will penetrate. Even if you fully treat the face of the wall, it will still get wet from water coming up through its foundations.

Modern practice of basement design allows for drainage tiles on the floor and channels around the walls to deal with the water, because experience has shown that waterproofing attempts so often fail.

There must be no wooden battens or other materials on the wet side of the lining as it will rot.

[Quangle]

thanks so much for comments everyone. Am contacting ukdamp.co.uk today (and buying a newbuild next time).