Rising damp with S1 Builders ltd and heritage house

Building Conservation.com - Rising Damp

Rising Damp is almost non-existent - it rarely occurs naturally , and it CERTAINLY doesnt move a metre up the walls as 'damp proofing'  'specialists' would have you believe. We have built experimental walls with old, porous bricks, jointed with lime mortar. When the base of the wall is placed in water, the bottom row will get wet.  Water is wicked up the brick, reaches the first mortar joint and evaporates. It rarely if ever goes beyond the first joint unless it is 'bridged' by having cement render slapped over the top of it. It certainly doesnt go the magical metre high that every rising damp salesman will claim. Do you know that it has NEVER been reproduced in a laboratory, despite many attempts to do so - even by the industry itself.

• Injection Damp Proofing old houses is a WASTE of time and money - it doesnt work, and it causes irreparable damage to the fabric of your house
• Damp Courses are almost NEVER broken, bridged or damaged, as damp proofing companies will always tell you
• There is almost always a specific reason for damp, which is easily fixed
• Do NOT be talked into hacking old plaster off and re-plastering with gypsum, or worse still, waterproofing compounds, or so called 'waterproofing or renovating plaster'!
• Nearly every case of so called rising damp is just condensation - the bottom of the wall is coldest, so moisture condenses near the floor - it doesnt rise!
• If you have a rotten timber frame, its because of all the modern materials used to plug the gaps and cover it - sill beams covered with cement, wattle and daub covered with cement, silicone sealant around the panels and filling holes in the wood..
• NEVER use cement, tar, cement render, modern acrylic or silicone caulking on a timber frame - it will rot in front of your eyes
• Never use modern acrylic or emulsion paints - they are death to old walls - they are plastic - they trap moisture and cause damp.  Avoid Weathershield, Sandtex, Stormdry - any 'protective masonry coatings'.
• Never use companies like Peter Cox, Timberwise, Rentokil, Kenwood unless they give you a full technical diagnosis of your problem using instruments OTHER than a damp meter, which they won't.