I know that most damp problems are not actually "rising damp" (or at least, that seems to be the concensus these days) - but all the clues suggest that my own damp problem may be just that. I remember hearing about electro osmotic damp proofing, using anodes and an electronic control box etc.
Has anyone here ever tried this methid and did it work? I found this web site which mentions the method:
My parents had this installed in a house in the sixties. It consisted of an earth rod and then copper strip run into the wall and looped all the way through at intervals. There was no electronics - just a direct connection.
IIRC, it was installed by Rentokil, so not a fly by night operation,
20 year guarantee and so on.The project as a whole certainly worked, although also consisted of lowering the ground level outside and putting in some trenches filled with gravel.
I suspect that it was the ground lowering that really did the job.
It works very well, it is a two part procedure.
Firstly, to install it you have to clear all the rubbish from around the house and reinstate drains etc.
Secondly, you sacrifice a hamster in the woods at midnight and rub your copper sticks with its fur. You take a control box from an electronic water deioniser/dephlogisticator/destickystuffincalcium thing and connect it to the blessed copper rods.
The damp disappears.
Those that say only stage 1 is needed have simply failed to see the light and have not paid enough to the dampfmeisters.
ROFL....
Just how pathetic would a company's behaviour over supporting its "guarantees" have to be before they became a cowboy outfit ? Rentokil's was worse.
Electro-osmotic damp-proofing works fine, so long as you really have an osmotic damp problem. If you have a fibreglass house with penetrating damp, it's probably worth a try, It might even work for fibreglass boats, but I imagine the current would need to be enormous.
Not my purchasing decision. As I recall, (and it was about 40 years ago), sorting out of a damp course was a mortgage pre-requisite and this was the least expensive and least disruptive option accepted by the building society.
You have to remember that in those days building society and bank managers were God and largely called the shots.
The bulding society also insisted that a meat safe was provided in the kitchen..
Whether there was a back hander from Rentokil to the building society manager, I have no idea.
I didn't say that I thought it actually *did* anything......
ROFL 20 year guarantee! Coldseal windows gave 10/15/20 year g/tees and where are they? Re-incarnated as Warmseal! Formally Stormseal, and before that (if my memory serves well - Guardian Fenster). There should be legislation against such practices.
I'm not saying that where such guarantees are necessary they shouldn't be provided - but where a company blatantly builds up such a consumer base based on such guarantees (and then "goes to the wall" because the liabilities might overburden them) are allowed to re-incarnate themselves by changing name with the same directors in charge!
Sorry for stealing the thread!
I completely agree, but was 40 years ago and wasn't my purchasing decision. I didn't say that I thought it worked either - more than likely the improvements came from clearing the soild around the house.
It is worth mentioning that Rentokil is still around and in the property care business. and part of a multinational employing 90,000 people.
This is a different issue and I don't think applied in the scenario I described.
What you're describing happens daily on a smaller or larger scale. The notion of limited companies is to create a separate legal entity to the individual directors and to separate their finances.
It is very common for companies to overcommit themselves in all sorts of ways, whether it be guarantees to customers or promises to suppliers to pay them for goods and services. There's really no difference - it;'s a commitment made and not kept.
If they exceed their resources and their financial facilities won't back them, they go broke - simple as that.
If it is then determined that the directors have acted outside the various Companies Acts, then they may forfeit their immunity from liability and may also be disqualified from being a director. I know of an instance where this has happened to somebody for ten years.
It's very easy to talk about legislating this and legislating that, but hard to make work. There is an ever increasing volume .of legislation for companies to deal with it as it is and those determined to be dishonest or sail close to the wind will always be able to do so.
Sometimes a business can fail for any number of legitimate issues relating to trading conditions, where the directors are simply unable to do anything apart from call in the receiver at the point that the company would become insolvent.
If the reasons are genuine, the law complied with and no misfeasance, is it reasonable to prevent the directors running a new business?
The difficulty comes with differentiating between something that follows the letter of the law but is morally questionnable and something that is less morally questionnable. It becomes a value judgment.
I'm not quite sure what guarantees and company legislation had to do with the original question.
In a previous discussion about DPC's and guarantees, I asked if *anyone* had
*ever* heard of any work being carried out under a DPC guarantee.There were no responses.
Go figure...
David
Andy, Thanks for the reply. Interesting... Well, if the above process worked for you parents, perhaps it will work on my house. I might even employ Rentokil! The guarantee would be worth having - even if only to help sell the place...
Jake
I would suggest doing the ground checking/lowering stuff first as well as airbricks because that costs little to nothing. As I say, I am not at all convinced that the electro-osmotic stuff actually did anything.
>
from rising damp first, as it won't help with penetrating damp or damp from condensation.
Trouble is with these things, if they are done the same time as other measures, the result is often wrongly attributed.
So do all the other things first, and if there is still excess damp rising in the wall, then it might be worth a look, even so the cost needs to be compared with other DPC measures.
It might only be worth it for walls that can't be fitted with a DPC, like rubble infill walls or interior walls. If the supplier can give some refs on where it has been used on important historic buildings as part of a restoration, that counts for something.
Trouble is with genuine rising damp is that it can leave salts in the wall that attract more damp.
cheers, Pete.
I'm sure it's not condensation, but it could conceivable be penetration; I have never investigated the cavities to see if they are full of debris. I guess that clearing the cavities of debris is high on the list of things to try first, yes?
Thank you for the good suggestions..
Jake
Have a look on Google Groups to read around on it a bit:
Another good source of info would be the forums at
In any case it would be useful to list all the possible causes of the damp, find ways of proving/disproving them, then consider the different solutions out there are and their cost/suitability etc.
cheers, Pete.
Pete, That sounds like a good systematic plan. Thanks. I think that one reason why the demon damp is so scary and off-putting to buyers, is that it's so little understood - even by many so-called pros...
JB
replying to Jake, Dougie wrote: It was used in the 80 it's a electric current running around the house and you had to put damp proof chemical in your Base cote as a backup it's not a good damp product
Came across this:-
Claims it's a complete fraud.
Electro-osmotic damp proofing is based on the quite fundamental and well-understood science of electrophoresis, and in particular, capilliary electrophoresis or electro-osmosis. See
Whether it works in practice or as implemented by individual companies, I don't know. Read more about electro-osmotic damp proofing in the various articles here
Too many variables to design a product that would be reliable. Brian
My mortgage provider required this in my 1780's rubble stone cottage in the late 80's. It was certainly completely hopeless on the worst affected wall, the solution to that turned out to be to hack off all the rendering and repoint with lime mortar giving exposed stone indoors. Previously, it had been wet at least to ceiling level. I now get traces of efflorescence a few feet up, but certainly not enough to worry about. The visible stone/mortar is bone dry. I have (ventilated) wainscotting to about 3 feet.
An interesting side effect was some form of electrolytic corrosion on damp earthed parts. I had a 13 amp socket in a standard hot galvanised metal box in one dampish spot (earthed, of course) and this largely corroded away in a few years. I used to have a radiator on the wet wall, copper pipes so everything earthed. The mounting screws corroded away in less than a year. I then mounted the brackets on 12 inch lengths of 8 mm austenitic stainless steel studding and these seemed to survive. However when I moved the radiator some years later, in association with going back to bare stone I discovered that they had lost at least half the material, they had become tapered pins reduced in diameter to about 1 mm at the deepest point.
I think the wire is at about +5 volts, but I can't immediately check it because it is all rather inaccessible. I believe the wire is titanium (and it doesn't corrode).
who posted on November 23, 2004, 3:08 pm
Dougie wrote: etc etc
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