Does a garage need a dpc?

[Peter Boulton]

Quick question - does a (brick) garage need a dpc?

What about if the dpc was omitted just under a window? But is present elsewhere (because the window replaced a door which was removed and then bricked up).

Thanks!

Pete

[Roger Mills]

Yes

There's a strong chance that the brickwork under the window will suffer from rising damp - and this may also spread sideways.

There should have been a DPC under of cill of the door frame which was removed. If the DPC was left in place, the replacement brickwork will have one anyway!

[robgraham]

Your problem depends on how the garage is built. If it's brickwork on top of a concrete raft, then there should be a dpm under the raft and there will be no rising damp anywhere. If it's the other way round and the concrete is laid inside the brickwork, your query, as Roger says, depends on whether there was a dpc under the door cill or not. One suspects that it might have been omitted there as it wouldn't be that critical for a door.

If you can see it's missing in the 'new' brickwork and this is important to you, your options are to drill and insert a chemical dpc, or rake out a course of the brickwork and insert a strip of dpm. Bear in mind that there should also be a layer under the window cill.

[Peter Boulton]

OP here! I'm being silly, I think. There is no dpc visible on the outside of the brickwork and the inside is boarded over temporarily. However, on closer inspection I can just see a dpc at each edge behind the boarded up bit, so I guess it must just have been a tidy job!

Sorry to waste everyone's time.

Pete

[Martin Bonner]

Why?

And why is that a problem? It's unlikely (although not impossible) that there would be enough rising damp 2 feet off the ground to rot the window. Of course, it would mean that anything stored in the garage might be liable to damp damage.

[Roger Mills]

Not only making the inside damp - with tools going rusty - but also the damp brickwork would potentially be susceptible to frost damage.

[Man at B&Q]

Most garages are pretty draughty places. I doubt it's any worse without a dpc.

So what about the brickwork *below* the dpc?

MBQ

[Roger Mills]

With any luck frost resistant bricks (semi engineering or somesuch) will have been used below DPC level. [They have on *my* garage, anyway!] But above DPC level it will likely be ordinary facing bricks.