The best practices for preventing rising damp
- Regularly check all gutters and downpipes for blockages, leaks and overflows, and check around the base of your house for water pooling against the walls.
- Before buying a house, check for a damp-proof course and make sure it has no breaks, particularly where the house has been added to. Make sure garden beds, driveways and paths have not been built up above the damp course.
- Keep your walls dry. Damp walls increase the risk of fungal rot and termite (white ant) attack in floor timbers.
- Walls need to breathe. Clean out existing air vents regularly, and get professional advice before adding new vents or vents in an extension.
- Salt damp is not always visible and can be inside wall cavities. Inspect cavities for debris and deteriorating wall ties.
- Adelaide’s reactive soils can dry out or hold too much water under a house. If in doubt, get professional advice.
- Make sure gardens are not piled against the walls, sprinklers are not soaking the walls, and wet garden products are not stacked against them.
If you have found rising damp in your walls
- Always get independent advice. There are many products and procedures, and the best check is to look at work your contractor has done before.
- Make sure your contractor does not use hard cement mortar to repoint failed lime mortar joints. It drives the damp further up the wall and can damage the bricks.
- Make sure your contractor does not seal the walls with water-repellent coatings, which trap the damp.
- Before undersetting or injection, make sure whatever caused the damp has been fixed.
- The cheapest quote is not always the best. Check the contractor’s experience, because a problem that is not fixed properly gets expensive.
These measures help, but they will not stop well-established rising damp from a failed damp course. That needs the damp course reinstated by silicone injection or undersetting. Call Barry on 0417 818 845 for a free inspection.