Advice on Damp Injections

[Andy Hall]

Perhaps they used water from one of those electromagnetic gizmos and it repelled the damp....

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh certainly I agree, except all MY damp problems have been rising..

Apart from obvious ones like water running down the walls when it rains..

[manatbandq]

Anyone got the money for a good patent lawyer?

MBQ

[Owain]

Perhaps stripping all the plaster off the wall and clearing round the outside to enable the house walls to be gently stroked with a crystal would realign the chakras of the bricks/stones back to the fundamental force fields of the original clay/rock, allowing drainage of the damp through the sedimentary interstitial pores.

I'm sure many people would pay *more* for a *chemical-free* form of damp proofing, especially one that comes with a (six month?) guarantee.

For a very reasonable extra charge, magnetised steel needles could be fired into the bricks at intervals.

Owain

[Lobster]

Probably standard procedure in the industry to give an artifically increased and impractical timeline for decorating so that when the injected DPC fails and the customer comes back wanting it sorting under guarantee, they have yet one more weapon in their armamentarium when it comes to thinking up creative reasons for rejecting it.

David

[.]

6 months ? 6 weeks [max] more like.

[dg]

A survey will determine if there is a damp problem, what is causing it and what will remedy it. This survey should not be done by the installation company, but by a suitably qualified independant person.

Now if there is a damp problem and the problem will go away by lowering ground levels, fixing leaking gutters or cill drips etc then that is the remedy. And injected DPC will possibly not be effective in these instances.

But given that a cause of rising dampness could be a failed DPC, then injecting the wall at the appropriate location WILL work. Unless perhaps if there is localised high gound water pressure and high capillary action in the walls, in which case the moisture will be forced up the wall at a higher pressure than the chemical barrier can resist. In this case then other solutions are needed.

Citing instances where tap water may have been used , or (in the case of others thread postings) 'my friend had it done', or 'this company did this ....' etc does not indicate that the treatment does not work. It merely shows that the treatment was most likely the wrong course of action for those particular circumstances in the first place.

Chemical injection does work, and is effective, but the fundamental thing to remember is that it is only designed for a certain situations. It is not a panacea for all damp problems.

dg

[Grunff]

That's the biggest pile of cr@p I've heard in quite some time. "high gound water pressure" indeed...

[dg]

Like from a leaking main, forcing water up and around into the local soils? Like from permeable soils on impermeable soils where the moisture concentrates in certain directions?

You may think you know it all, but you certainly don't.

HTH

dg

[Guy King]

The message from Grunff contains these words:

Oh yeah, common problem.

Didn't you know it's the root of the kids' fear of stepping on the cracks in the pavement? It's not bears that get you, it's artesian wells.

[Richard Faulkner]

And guy who did injection doesnt have to honour his guarantee if it isnt left for 6 months.

[Peter Parry]

Finding such a person is of course an exercise in itself - there about 5 in the UK.

An injected DPC rarely if ever has any affect. This is largely because neither brick nor stone exhibits significant capillary effect.

As long as you clear all the crap from the walls. Clearing the crap from the walls is actually what cures the fault of course.

The "ground water pressure" cannot exceed the height of the ground.

Several studies by the BRE have failed to find _any_ capillary action in walls made from brick or various stones - where is the evidence it exists?

You have references for studies which show this?

Why, if this is the case, is chemical injection quite specifically deprecated for use in old house with no DPC?

[meow2222]

Thank you!

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

Like from water collecting at the base of un DPC'ed soft 17th century brickwork on clay soils. With no actual foundations.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Total and utter bollocks.

It was easy to see which parts of my un DPC'd walls were injected, and which were not...by the sodden crumbling timberwork and the pattern of efflorescence...totally absent on the injected walls.

[meow2222]

simplistic, not simple

Why you think I would want to repeat to you what has been explained before when you cant even be botherd to go get basic information I dont know.

NT