Which type of damp proof? Injections or Wykamol

[SoniaShoe]

we have rising damp and its quite a problem generally for our house as we live very close to the sea in a victorian house.

previous owners had injections a few years ago and some of those have failed. We've had quote for both injections and the full whack of stripping off the internal plaster (up to the mantel pieces in 2 rooms) and using Wykamol.

Has anyone got any experience / advice?

None of these solutions are likely to work without finding the cause of the damp in the first place.

I'd be wary about stripping out plaster and replacing with impermeable stuff- old buildings are designed to breathe.

Get an independent surveyor to diagnose the problem, anything else is a waste of money and likely to fail again.

Yup. Either will probably make the problem worse eventually, or at best move the symptoms to somewhere else.

Please get a survey done first by someone registered with PCA or one of the damp specialists.
I had a waterproof membrane fitted, they were going to inject the walls too but didn't.
All that happened was the damp then rose higher than the membrane so I had a strip of damp around the middle of my wall instead of at the bottom.
My survey cost £60 but they can go up to a couple of hundred. It would have been worth paying that than paying for two damp proof courses which is what happened

hmm this is very interesting and i'm really glad i asked! so even the full bang isn't necessarily going to work, that' s a worry.

we've only just bought the house so had a surveyor do the survey (we did a homebuyers report but he was a friend and not that experienced in doing these) but he just suggested injections. it sounds like it will be worth getting another professional opinion.

Definitely. But don't for the love of Jeebus get the survey done by a company which offers DPC type services, or anyone connected to them. They all offer "surveys". The problem is that their surveyors are actually salesmen.

My place is riddled with damp, but I've got on top of most of it using this and this. In my case the stuff that looked like rising damp was a combination of condensation and penetrating damp. I do actually have some rising damp at the front of the house, but that's because some whopper painted the front using an impermeable masonry paint, which I will have to remove.

Repointing using strong cement based mortars is also a big cause of what looks like rising damp.

So you have some detective work to do, but it's actually quite a fun game once you get into it. You can work this out yourself, but both books also have the details of the affiliations held by people capable of making an assessment of the cause of your problem.

Do read up on this. Subfloor DPCs generally just hold damp out of sight until they fail. Much better to eliminate the source of the water. Good luck...

thanks cheesebadger and everyone - very useful advice.

i've just got myself one of the books - the old house handbook - think i'll be needing that!

The Damp House is the more useful of the two for diagnosing specific damp patches, it has pictures and everything!. However, the advice in both books is to avoid the use of impermeable materials except perhaps in the roof.

found this interesting article which reflects everything you've been saying. its completely changed my view on DPC. thought i'd pass it on...

www.heritage-house.org/managing-damp-in-old-buildings.html

I was going to advise you to read the heritage-house article too. Chemical injections into old buildings are a total waste of time. We had damp under our floors of our Victorian Cottage which was all caused by the ground level at the back of the house being too high. Once we had taken down the levels at the back of the house, put in more air bricks and had the rotten ends chopped off the floor joists and repaired all the dampness has gone. Have you checked drainpipes etc? If you have any rendering on the house this could be a problem if it is not breathable or it could be cracked. Read the article - I think it will give you more confidence in your building and hopefull keep some money in your bank acount!

by the way - rising damp doesn't normally exist and even if it did I can't see why being close to the sea would affect it!!!! I can hear the seagulls.......

Whatever you do, don't get a survey done by a company called UK Damp. I did after seeing them recommended on this site several times. For various reasons I felt uneasy about things when the guy turned up to do the survey and never 'got around' to settling his invoice. I felt guilty about this until a couple of months later when the company showed up on Watchdog and was exposed as a complete rip-off with rubbish advice.