Just wondering if anyone has ever used this company and this 'unusual' damp proofing method?
Brian
Sounds similar to the Dalton Wallguard? system which used porous ceramic tubes to draw in moisture and vent it to the air. That didn't work either.
Youre barking up the wrong tree. Damp problems arent solved by magical treatments, theyre solved by identifying the cause of the damp and putting it right.
Why dont you tell us a lot mor about the house and its problems.
NT
It's a very old Victorian house converted into flats with very thick walls, most of the windows are single glazed and there's no CH (yet). I've had condensation problems in most of the bedrooms as they aren't heated as much as the living rooms, particularly in winter when people don't open windows as much.
The ground floor flats are showing signs of rising damp also, they had a Rentokil 'electro-osmosic' DPC installed years ago (not guaranteed) that failed (as they all did!). The ground floor flats needs a DPC and I was all set to go for an injection one but wondered if the Holland one will also help me with the condensation problems which obviously the injection won't.
I'm fitting CH soon so it could well be that the condensation goes anyway.
Cue people saying there's no such thing as rising damp, and all treatment companies are charlatans who will wreck your house :-)
It probably isn't rising damp, so the attempt to 'fix' the rising damp was doomed to failure.
Yes. Use the damp areas as an excellent indication of where radiators should go.
No damp treatment will affect this, only improving ventilation will.
They probably don't. What they do need is the original conditions which kept them dry to be restored. Quite often this involves nothing more than clearing away all the debris and plant life around the walls (which is the first thing the damp proofers do and why their damp proofing appears to work). Reinstating the old French ditch around the house will always work with this sort of construction and is a fraction of the price of damp proofing.
Only if you do something about the ventilation as well.
I'm not familiar with a French ditch, could you give me more info?
DPC or injected treatments to prevent rising damp should never be used on traditional stonework, new or old. The only way to prevent rising dampness is to provide a well drained and vented French ditch. This is a drained ditch dug around the perimeter of a building into which is set a graded perforated land drain, which is ducted away from the building to a suitable soakaway. The ditch is then filled with clean rubble (minimum size of 100 mm dia.), to within 200 mm of the surface, and is then blinded off with old slates or slate waste, and covered with earth or turf. When digging trenches for new foundations it is worth allowing additional width for a French ditch.
A French Drain, or Colonial Drain, is a ditch dug around a property that allows damp to be removed before it causes damage to actual structure of the walls. It is dug to just below the damp proof level of the walls and filled in layer beginning with large stones at the bottom reducing in size to small grit on the top surface.
In this way, it stops water running directly against the walls of the property from the surface of the soil / land by allowing it to drain through the layers to below a damp proofing level and away around the property to a suitable land drainage system.
In message , Rob Morley writes
In 17 years selling houses, most that had had a "damp proof course" injected when purchased, were found to have rising damp when they were sold again a few years later.
I cant say that there is no such thing, but I can certainly say that it is often misdiagnosed, and that the treatment does not solve the underlying problem.
Exactly what happened in my daughter's ground floor Vic flat. Previous owners had damp proof injected only 2 years before; not surprising the company had gone bust. Building Soc insisted it had to be re-done which the vendors paid for. 2 years on its no better and a new surveyor recommended removing all the rubble and other crap at the side of the house. Which is what I'd been saying all along.
OK, first youre not in a position to do damp work yet, since the install of CH may be all thats needed. Maybe.
2nd, before geting caught up in all that ripoff stuff, check the basics. Find yourself a diagram online of all the usual places water or damp get in, and check over the property, fixing any problems. Broken gutters, blocked downpipes, exterior soil level not below internal floor, floor void vents blocked, lead gutters gone, missing slates, all the usual stuff.Now, when youve done those, and got CH in, and given it months to dry, youll most likely find no further problem. If there is, come talk to us. Until then there is really no sense doing anything more than running a humidistatic dehumidifier for quick drying, and attending to the usual points.
I can be around 99% sure your house does not need a dpc. Companies work by making a profit.
NT
How deep do you go? What about when you have an 18th C rubble stone cottage that's (presumably) planted on the limestone bedrock? I have a mini-ditch, open rather than rubble filled, that drains well to a proper drain. The rendering has been hacked off along this ditch and finished with a proper bell-cast about a foot up, but the wall is still very damp over the full length (up to about 4 feet). This is a serious enquiry, not a flippant one.
If Im interpreting rightly, your walls are cement rendered. Thats a problem. Remove render and the damp surface slowly dries out.
But take real care. Removing hard cement from stone can do a great deal of damage if not done with real care.
As ever, check all causes of damp, as any source of damp in the house will increase RH and thus decrease wall-drying evaporation.
Theres more to it of course, but that is a frequent problem that generally needs sorting.
NT
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