Moisture meters

Unless you need it for sustained use, a multimeter and two drawing pins is about as accurate as a ready made one. Google is your friend.

That is how I monitored my floorboards and joists after a recent (sustained) flood from dishwasher.

I bought an inexpensive model for use in my caravan. It was the type with the two prongs on the end of a length of cable and, yes, IMO they are more useful than the type with the prongs built into the end of the device. You can get the cabled prongs into awkward corners that you could not get the whole device into.

It worked very effectively - it had an analogue dial with green, amber and red sections. If the needle swung across into the red then you knew you had damp.

It was a Rapitest - like this one here:

I agree. Sans the drawing pins in my case because the pointy ends of the multimeter probes worked fine. Set to the resistance range, a few test probes in known dry and known damp materials for callibration purposes and away you go.

Nick

Multimeters are available from =A32:08 frm rapidonline, and are far more use than 'damp meters.' DMs are accurate with wood, but not at all with masonry.

NT

Theyre also fairly irrelevant with masonry. Either you see signs of a damp problem, or you dont. If you dont, there isnt one.

NT

Thanks to everyone for their comments.

Mine's a no-name ST-125 from CPC when it was half price (£10). Works well, and has a scale for timber and a scale for masonry. Probes are attached and it doesn't have a hold button, which can be a problem when the only way to get it in to the material leaves the LCD display not visible (and no backlight if it's dark). It has battery test and calibration test facility.

For timber, the most important range to read accurately is between

It seems to be remarkably consistent, and readings are exactly what I would expect, so I suspect it's quite accurate.