There Is No Such Thing as Rising Damp!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 เม.ย. 2024
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THE RISING DAMP MYTH
Rising damp is a condition that affects the walls of buildings when water from the ground rises up through the bricks and mortar, mainly due to capillary action.
Despite its well-documented presence and the potential damage it can cause to properties, a contingent of sceptics believe that rising dampness is a myth concocted to sell unnecessary damp-proofing services.
However, a wealth of scientific evidence and studies support the existence of rising damp and highlight the importance of addressing it to preserve the integrity of buildings.
The rising damp concept is grounded in physics and material science principles. Capillary action, where liquid spontaneously rises in a narrow space such as a thin tube or in porous materials, is central to rising damp.
This action is due to the adhesive force between the water and the material being stronger than the cohesive forces within the water itself. The pores in bricks and mortar act like many tiny capillaries, allowing groundwater to rise up through the walls of a building.
This process is exacerbated in older buildings, which may lack a damp proof course (DPC) or have a DPC that has failed over time.
Scientific studies have been conducted to measure and observe the effects of rising damp within buildings. For instance, researchers have utilized salt analysis, moisture readings, and thermographic inspections to trace the path of moisture through building materials.
These studies have consistently demonstrated that water from the ground can ascend through masonry to a height that can cause visible damage and create a conducive environment for mould growth and wood rot.
Moreover, the presence of hygroscopic salts, which can absorb moisture from the air, further supports the existence of rising damp. These salts are often found in the masonry of buildings affected by rising dampness, having been deposited as the water evaporates.
The ability of these salts to attract and retain moisture adds to the dampness of the walls, even in the absence of direct contact with groundwater.
This phenomenon has been thoroughly documented in laboratory settings, where the hygroscopic behaviour of these salts in masonry materials has been closely studied.
Critics of rising dampness often point to inadequate ventilation, condensation, and penetrating dampness as the real culprits of building moisture.
While these factors can contribute to a building's overall dampness, they do not negate the existence of rising dampness. Instead, they highlight the complexity of damp issues in buildings and the need for comprehensive diagnostics to identify the correct cause.
Installing or repairing a damp-proof course is crucial to address rising dampness effectively. This barrier prevents groundwater from rising up through the walls.
Modern building regulations mandate the inclusion of a DPC in new constructions, a testament to the recognition of rising dampness as a genuine concern by industry professionals and regulatory bodies alike.
In conclusion, the scepticism surrounding rising mainly stems from a misunderstanding of its causes and the science behind it. The evidence for increasing damp is empirical and rooted in fundamental physical principles.
Addressing rising dampness is crucial not just for the structural integrity of buildings but also for the health and comfort of their occupants, making it a topic of both scientific and practical importance.
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#risingdamp #damp #homeimprovement
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My parents recently had a damp internal brick wall in their Victorian terrace house with slate DPC. For some reason they got a damp proofing company to look at it before involving me, their architect son. The damp proofer prodded the wall with his meter and announced that the problem was rising damp caused by a failed DPC. His solution was to break off all the existing plaster, inject a chemical DPC, paint the wall with waterproof paint and then replaster (with cement plaster, of course). They wanted £4000.
Thankfully, my Dad asked for my input before giving the damp proofer the go-ahead. I quickly found that the wall in the loft - directly above the damp wall below - was wet. I looked at the roof and noticed that my parents' roof slates don't overlap next door's roof and chunks of mortar were missing. My Dad paid a roofer £800 to fix this - and lo and behold, the wall below dried out within a few weeks.
THIS is why damp proofing companies have a bad reputation. They claim that all damp issues are rising damp.
A damp proofing guy came to my house and did the same thing with his meter on my wall, and suggested the same treatment. The estimate came the next day and it was exactly £1000, to the penny. This was a small patch of damp in an otherwise dry wall, by the way. It just seemed so bogus. I turned it down, obviously. They have no interest in actually solving the issue, just flogging you their wares.
We use damp specialists quite often on our jobs, our role as a general contractor is to prepare the site, let them do their work and then we reinstate it all back to how it was or usually a lot better.
My understanding and maybe assumption, is that the surveyor has done the leg work, excluded all simple factors and then called in the damp specialist for a bullet proof system to stop the damp. This can range from dpc injections with special renders and plaster finish, up to bubble wrapping the entire area with sump pumps, the works.
The only reason I bring all this up in your thread is because I wanted to bring to light that the rising damp specialist is most times just going to assume that's what it is, I've never seen one take a holistic approach, trying to decipher the source of the damp, they just want no come backs. In London at least, most times you can only hold the water at bay rather than use methods of reducing the water from the outside, like French drains for instance.
Exact same issue except we sunk 5k in and the problem returned a year later (when the rains returned). The company won't even take my calls now.
The Georgian trend for wood panelling to a dado rail about 3' or so off the floor level was to hide the damp at the bottom of the walls.
The people who work with Skill Builder probably believe that.
A lot of Victorian Houses got damp and rotted and fell down, the ones that are left didnt, because they were built on a hill or some other reason .
But I do think most damp problems can be sorted by fixing the roof and gutters, lowering the ground level outside, sorting window leaks, ventilation getting washing and cooking damp out fast, etc etc
The Victorian mid terrace I grew up in had a ventilated space below the floorboards and slate separating the floor joists from the supporting pillars. I don't remember if there was any sort of damp proofing in the walls but I can't imagine them missing that out if they did it for the floor. I can go to street view on Google Maps and look at the street and there is a clearly different type of brick used below the main walls that rises about one course above ground level. I imagine they are resistant to capillary action drawing water up. We did not have damp but we did have problems from cast iron gutters that regularly destroyed the jointing between sections as they expanded and contracted due to temperature changes. We also had Jack Frost visit and put ice on the inside of some of the single glazed windows in winter.
The issue is the misdiagnosing of rising damp. The damp industry has rightly got a bad name, as they wilfully rip people off with big disruptive work when there may be a far simpler cause of their problems.
Rising damp in my bungalow living room turned out to be a leaking loft skylight. The rising damp in the dining room turned out to be leaky grouting from the shower cubicle in the bathroom on the other side of the wall.
The issue is the specialisation in the building industry. Even surveys, they've got all the different kinds of them, from useless to the ones dedicated to sell you something. Yes, there are architectural firms, but they charge more than the actual remedy.
So it is either self learning or trying everything.
Rising damp gets on my wick.
🤣😃
I'm firmly in Peter Ward's camp on this one. The vast majority of British builders have nothing beyond the most rudimentary scientific knowledge or that of building science. Most are clueless about historical materials and techniques and how they differ from modern ones. This is almost always a recipe for disaster when trying to solve damp problems in old houses. They have a horrible habit of trying to apply solutions where they really don't have the knowledge or the skills to diagnose issues properly. When called out on it they usually get very salty and defensive instead of asking how they can understand things better.
When I purchased my first house, I had rising damp apparently, quotes from a few firms came into the thousands, after searching the internet and I stumbled onto one of his videos, external ground levels were too high and fitted a couple of airbricks, fixed the 'rising damp' in a matter of weeks, literally, just had to wait for it to dry
@Marty7787 Yes exactly, a lot of damp problems just come down to better ventilation. Really the damp guys are just salesmen for whatever chemical rubbish they use.
Exactly my experience. Never met a builder with any idea how Victorian houses work. So they slap Portland cement everywhere and pretty soon you're f*cked.
Exactly.
My experience of wet interior walls in older properties seems to generally be that the old sand and lime mortar snots that never got scraped off when the brickie laid the bricks has all fallen off and filled the cavity causing capillary action to pull water up from the footing and bridge over the DPC. Condensation seems to mainly appear behind furniture, along the inside of sills and at high level corners where there's not air movement and tends to cause black mould to appear. I did a lot of surveys regarding this back in the days of ali windows and was sent on countless courses for it. I remember it used to pour down the glass on old single glazed Crittels, down the frames on double glazed ali windows so a plastic thermal break was added, this caused the reveals to get covered in condensation, then came uPVC and things got so bad then with wallpaper peeling off and mildew everywhere. The only solution was to stop breathing out.
Our 1883 cottage isn't that bad. See my post above.
...or buy a dehumidifier.
Correct, my 130 yr old house had rising damp which caused a very bad outbreak of dry rot. Was a mix of lack of ventilation, leaky gutter, build up of lime mortar snots at the underfloor footings which covered the slate damp course and outside soil level being to high. Had to have the dry rot treated professionally with fungicide etc, but I cleared the entire underfloor of all rubble, installed 8 new underfloor vents, repaired the gutter and lowered the soil level to brick depth below slate dpc. No chemical dpc installed, just let everything dry out.
@@johnriggs4929 Yes but I can't afford to run one 24/7 at today's electricity prices.
Im glad you got it sorted, i was reading an article on "dry rot" in it the idea was that it was originally typical rot that had dried out, or periodically dries out, like during summer months and we during the wetter months. Maybe the rising damp deniers are confusing it with the dry rot situation. Just a thought.
Here in Finland older buildings are made of wood as people were poor. Then in 80s we got non breathing materials and so many of the old wooden buildings were ruined when they got remodeled, "updated" with these plastic materials. As suddenly the house doesn't breathe anymore the moisture condensates inside the walls..
Yes - it's still happening to buildings all over the world - but this isn't rising damp - this is interstitial condensation which will destroy a wooden building very quickly, as well as being very unhealthy for the occupants (lots of fungal spores).
@@nickwinn7812 True in most cases. Here people convert basements into living spaces too, which causes it's own problems when wrong materials are used.
In the Netherlands, older houses have a so-called trassraam. The lower layers of a facade below ground level were constructed from hard-baked clinkers and waterproof mortar of air lime, trass and sand. The trass frame (layer) prevented capillary water transport through the masonry from the ground as much as possible.
I think the argument is that many countries don’t use DPC’s. And that’s because they use proper site drainage, foundation design and moisture resistant materials.
I love your humor! And all the information you give us ofcourse
Apparently we have the lowest average home heating temperature in Europe coming in at 16.6C. The Swedes and Danes have thiers at a toasty average of 20C. I've seen a lots of people complaining of damp and mould issues since the energy price spike.
Food for thought.
Warm air carries moisture and without adequate ventilation causes condensation. Here in the UK we haven't used our central heating for past couple of years but we have increased ventilation with great success.
@@jennywren8937 Yes modern houses are airtight which also causes issues. The best way to deal with damp is to crank up the heating and force the moisture out of the house . The Georgians knew this hundreds of years ago they built porous houses and ran fires in every room.
We live in a limestone cottage, have the heating on 20c all year round and it's as dry as a bone. We hang the washing and it's dry in 6 hours.
Never understood people who choose to sit shivering all winter and potentially damaging their house when they can afford to run their heating. I'd rather forego the cost of a summer holiday to be comfortable all winter.
How does a wick for a lamp work.
Answer, capillary action.
Capillary attraction
Is your house built with lamp wick?
I was surprised that my Victorian terraced house did have a tar damp proof course. Sadly it was fitted below ground making it useless. Everything was soaking wet. Slugs everywhere. Plaster falling off. All the walls painted with tar suggested it had probably been damp since it was built. Had to replace all the timber joists. I removed the bricks and fitted a plastic DPC below the joists on both leafs of brickwork. Not one drop of damp at all anywhere after that. Sold the house 16 years later with their surveyor saying it was dry as a bone.
The tar layer was almost certainly above ground level when built, and over the years and alterations to the ground outside the building has ended up burrying the DPC.
Yep. I had that problem in my Victorian house in Norwich. The cobbled street was visible in places where the tarmac had not been maintained over the years, and that was below the level of the slate DPC (just). Unfortunately, at some time the council installed a tarmac pavement which breached the DPC of the entire terrace. @@scotthenry3401
You should have just lowered the ground level.
The number 1 cause of rising damp is damaged drains and drainage issues👍 good points though Roger, but most people don’t even ask for the correct type of damp survey so it is inevitable they get ripped off. I looked at one this week that cost 30k to damp proof and the drains were shot! Unfortunately the dingbat surveyor didn’t even check 🤷♂️
I've lost manys a chocolate digestive in my tea due to rising damp
A general builder for over 40 years and I’ve seen every kind of wall construction and the damp that affects each one. Rising damp can and does occur where conditions are right. Solid walls are particularly prone as are those where no DPC or DPCs are installed. Contaminated ground water or materials can also be a cause particularly hydrophilic salts which will permanently attract airborne moisture. We all breathe, cook and bathe - sources of airborne moisture. Most do not know that, except for a few days in the year, that the moisture levels inside a house are higher than outside (warm air carries more moisture) and moisture will seek any means to even up its level by passing through building materials thereby initiating condensation on walls, ceilings and floors, interstitial damp where dew point is within the structure.
I’ve dealt with it all by various means. When told by householders what they think it is, counter to my observations, is the time to leave them to the careless hands of others…
I noticed this on my lime wall. it had rising damp that bought salts into the lime. Solved the penetrative damp from outside, but noticed the lime would get wet again after drying, even high up the wall. It was the salts attracting the moisture from the room.
My rented flat effectively sits in a swamp. The wallpaper in the living room is peeling off in places due to damp. I fixed a similar issue in my dad's brick built shed by improving the drainage around the walls. Anyway, I'll watch the video now.
Surveyor stuck his meter in my wall and told me I had rising damp. I told him to look out of the window so he could see we were eight feet above ground. It's a rip off, mostly.
One charleton doesn't prove anything.
Having worked on older houses in Cumbria, I have found animal skins used for damp proofing on properties built in 1800's
One source of damp in our Victorian house was crumbling chimney mortar, the whole wall sopping wet. Once repaired and sealed it's now dry in the fireplaces. We haven't used our central heating much for the past couple of years but with improved ventilation and dehumidifiers no black mould or condensation. This summer we are going to renew garden land drains using filter fabric to prevent silting. We renewed external concrete with lime mortar, but still suffer some ingress on exposed walls so we are treating with modern breathable damp cream.
I live in Sweden and my house was built 1920. When the builders made the cellar they installed damp-proof course to stop the rising damp reaching ground level. It's installed about 50cm above ground level, between brick layers. It's made out of some thick fabric and tar. I do worry that it has failed in some spots.
Many of the Victorian buildings I work on have no damp course at all. The problem worsened by rendering the outside with cement. The damp will creep up the wall on the inside, up the old lime plaster. See it regularly. There are many ways to resolve the issue, there isn’t just one solution.
Well put
Lime plaster is breathable/transmits vapour so moisture will travel through it and not up. Even gypsum plaster is fairly breathable but cement render is not and also modern paint finishes will lock in moisture.
@@johncranna moisture can still travel up lime plaster, but it’s less likely to due to its breathability. For instance, if your underfloor vents are blocked moisture will probably travel up higher as you don’t have the air flow to aid evaporation.
Rising damp is a scientific fact. But the wholesale diagnosis of all damp as rising damp is definitely the issue.
Our house, an end terrace built in 1893, was damp when we bought it. The previous owners had had damp proof rods installed, the internal plaster stripped off and cement rendered 1m up from the floor.
It was still damp.
The house was also rendered on the outside. We decided to knock all this off and lo and behold the issue was penetrating damp and the gable wall in question got all the prevailing weather.
We had the brick sandblasted, repointed and then i treated the whole house with permagard damp proof cream. The walls now breathe and any water that hits them beads off like a waxed car.
The house is bone dry.
So, in our case a total mis diagnosis of rising damp and no doubt £1000s wasted by the previous owner.
Hi Roger thank you for replying, who would have thought it was such a nightmare finding radiators to fit your pipes as mine are not all the same distance from the wall and one size is no longer made so having to fit an exstension at each end.Thanks Stuart.
The best damp I ever found, turned out to be a shadow cast by a downlight!!
6:27 couldn't agree more, used do property developments and the victrian houses from west and east was like day and night !
What is your opinion on mitigating rising damp in buildings by waterproofing the ground level zone with bitumen to prevent moisture from ascending through the structure?
That was a popular approach in the 1950s. All it usually does is keep the walls wet by preventing evaporation.
Excellent rant Roger
You’ve nailed it.. ahem.. from the ground up 👍
My house was built between 1903-1909. It has slate for DPC, the house is bone dry (in a wet area).
The old slate damp proof courses rarely fail. I have them in my house
It's called capillary action,
Capillary action will only draw water up a certain amount then what? If it kept going perpetual motion would be common place, irrigation would be easy, the desserts would be alive with plant life and so on. The working-class people of Britain who built the 3 or 4 hundred-year-old houses without damp issues didn't do so because they had endless resources. They did what worked and they did it for a good reason.
@@Theflyingpotato its almost as if we live in a society now where materials are selected by how cheap they are instead of by their level of quality; where buildings are built by the lowest bidders and also, funnily enough, its almost as if brick companies work on such low margins now that bricks are more aerated/less dense which would only aid rising damp.
One last thing, you mention perpetual motion like you know a single thing about physics, though clearly you don't because if you did you know how capillary action works and what its limits are.
As the height of the water increases the gravitational force on it increases, this eventually counteracts the force behind the capillary action which stops the water from just sucking up through the whole building. how high the capillary force pulls the water is dictated by size of the pores/tubes, the surface tension of the water within the material and the pressure above the liquid, low or negative pressure above the liquid will pull it up. Chimneys have a similar concept, the draw in a chimney is from the lower/negative pressure above the house pulling the air up through the chimney from lower down where the pressure is higher.
Tree's use capillary action to live so all those massive trees taller than houses are all sucking water up throughout themselves to the outer reaches of each branch.
The reason we dont have wet deserts is because of limited water supply in those regions, high evaporation levels, the composition of the ground itself and even geological phenomina like the 'rain shadow effect' - TLDR Go back to school mate
@@Theflyingpotato the smaller the capillary diameter the higher the water will go. In brickwork it stops rising around 4ft. Plenty high enough to rise through any footings and sub floor and into the main living space.
@@bakedbeings Trees are alive, the leaves create negative pressure. That's a different process.
If capillary action in buildings were a real thing then canal towpaths and old watermills would be sodden but they aren't. Neither are the buildings in Venice.
I belive tbe issue is the over perscription of 'rising damp' as a sale. When a building that has been OK for decades, but all of a sudden some pillock needs £10k to delay the issue. Whe the issue may be ground levels, drainage, water leaks, the 99% of causes go unresolved
My Daughter bought a Victorian workers cottage, with no damp proofing, that the previous owners had done everything they could to make damp, rendered the outside walls, built up the ground outside over the airbricks etc, It has taken them 10 years to sort this out, replacing the roof, removing all the render and repointing the whole building with lime mortar.
Replace the roof. Always the first thing to do to cure RISING DAMP!
@@nickwinn7812 you should have seen the holes! Also the top half of the front wall leaning out, no point in doing the rest of the house if the roof leaks!
Great video. I want to know what Roger has been putting in his coffee though!
We've an old cottage that has a little bit of it and my wife hates the issue. I try to tell her that it's not that bad and expensive remedial work may not cure it entirely and it's best to rub the salt marks down every now again with a splash of paint. Indeed the condensation isn't much, I wipe the bottoms of the windows off in the winter every morning and ventilate. Fir drying clothes we run a 40w dehumidifier next to the washing early in the day and I put heater bars in the fitted wardrobes ro circulate the air. It's a bit musty, however overall not a huge issue. The house is electric only and the bills are £2,500 ish p.a. at present and I think it's cheaper and safer than installing a heat pump.
Ooohhhhhh Miss Jones…with this dutch hardcore trance you are really spoiling us.
Recently bought a 1950s house, thought I had rising damp but upon investigation I've discovered fluffy cavity wall insulation that is soaking wet and the cavity is full compact dirt and debris about a meter high. Pretty sure this is causing condensation on the lower parts of the wall, hence looking like rising
That sounds like the cavity is totally compromised, from the point of view of insulation and damp control.
You need a specialist cavity wall insulation remover firm or similar.
@@DrRogB I can't afford a specialist unfortunately, I am in the trades (plasterer) and doing most of the work myself so I've been methodically taking out bricks, blowing out the insulation and also cleaning the bottom of the cavity, I'm hoping by doing this in conjunction with an injected DPC will fix my issue
Hi my old house was built in 1880(seen the deeds) this house has a slate damp coarse layer as pointed by my dad(his trade was a brickie) so there you go a Victorian terraced house with dpc (slate).
in 1875 regulations meant new houses had to have a dpc
I have rising damp in the living room, the treatment of which is on my to do list and I can categorically state that it does exist
The fact it has risen is not the argument, the fact it is there and cannot evaporate is the issue.
@@sgfelectrical734 Are you saying your solution would be to run heating and Positive Pressure Ventilation 24/7 ?
@@hunchanchoc8418 no far from it. Tho a moden a air tight house dose requires a mvhr system to run 24/7
Has nobody spotted the irony in an "air tight house" needing mechanical ventilation 24/7? A truly passive house would not need external energy or embedded machines to function.@@sgfelectrical734
It very much does exist, but there is an issue with a lot of dampcure firms ...
Any damp issues in a building are often misdiagnosed as rising damp, because fly by night cowboy firms can charge you a lot to treat it (regardless if you already have a working damp course) - and then if it doesn't fix the issue, they are gone, or refuse to help, so you have to get it diagnosed properly and fixed ...
A lot of damp in Modern building is condensation through under ventilation and poor heat. However often damp is a combination of several factors working together.
roger, how can i forward you some images regarding damp. ive been told its rising damp!
www.skill-builder.uk/send
biggest problem is a lot of the ground levels are to bloody high people get the drive done etc and they don't care about it cause they want to do the job
Good stuff as always, Roger! 💪
Is damp roof injection still a thing? I remember doing it in the 80s, it had a 50 year guarantee providing the “membrane” wasn’t punctured but as soon as the the skirting boards were replaced, the guarantee was void!
Love it.
Roger, I have a house that was thrown together in the late 70s. I have been chasing damp away on all four corners. (its a detached bungalow). I noticed that the bell on the outiside actually laps over the damp course, hiding it. Should I redo the bell so its a quarter inch above the damp course? Thanks in advance. Me and the wife love your channel. Cheers, Ben
Hi Ben
If you have a cavity wall it is unlikely that the damp is transferring across to the inner unless you have debris in the cavity or insulation. I am not a fan of bell cast render because it soaks up the run off but I think I would want to know that it is the cause of the problem before I hacked it all off.
@@SkillBuilder I think there is a couple of bridges where mortar fell onto the wall ties when it was built. My dad knew the brickys who built it and they were sloppy apparently. Thanks though. I am painting it with Sandtex over the next few weeks. See if that helps. Thanks Roger, you're a star
Before you do anything too drastic just bear in mind you can get damp on internal skin on external walls even if the cavities are reasonably clean. The air in the room cannot always circulate properly right into the corners and if there is no insulation it causes a cold spot that gets damp.
@@stephenribchester2185 I have an upside down cheveron shaped damp patch in the centre of a 5m wall in the kids bedroom. Its about 1.5m long and 300mm wide We stripped the paint off two weeks ago and its still not dry. The bricks in the floor cavity below the room are wet too. I wonder if its the roof then?
@@AmbionicsUK This sounds a lot worse than what I thought from your original post. Reading your post are you saying the damp starts at around 1.5m up from the floor, is not in a corner, makes a damp patch triangular in shape 300 wide at the top, tapering as it gets lower and this goes down to the floor? If this is what you are describing then it is probably some form of raining in. It could be penetrating the render and bridging the cavity but the render would have to be in pretty poor condition for that to happen and would be more likely on a gable wall as there is more area for the rain to hit.
It could be the roof, if that wall is a gable then the roof will be faulty above the patch. If the wall is single height with the gutter running along it then, if it is the roof, it could be any where along that line up to the ridge as the rain could be getting in, running down the felt then leaking out at the bottom as the felt will have gone brittle by now and could be compromised at the bottom.
Thanks for an informative video, and it seemed a little different!
It got such a bad name because Rising Damp became a synonym for pushing universal solutions before doing a proper analysis.
Great video Roger!!
That's some next-level greenscreen work! 😉
Roger’s rant on fire - great video getting permission to sit on top of the brandenberg gate 👍👍
Rising damp is just an example of what is commonly known is the science community as capillary action, which is the rising of moisture through a porous material. You can demonstrate this by dipping a paper towel in water from above, then watching the water rise. Bricks are also porous being made from clay. Just bricks being a harder material, capillary action will be a bit slower.
Damp certainly doesn't rise to a metre plus though..
Rising damp is more of an issue in solid wall properties like the old terraced properties in Brighton and Hove, it's less present in cavity wall properties or those with damp proof courses and a ventilated floor void.
You've exceeded ALL expectations in this video Roger .... When they Re-Make - 'Rising Damp' - You've GOT the Job 😂🤣😂🤣
I had patch of "rising" damp but it went above 1.5 m high. being aware i looked up and down, found leaking flashing and fixed the long standing problem.....
It's interesting how quickly Skill Builder switched from "use breathable materials" to "we should use modern technology".
That is simply not true. We have always been in favour of a damp proof course. I think you are confused
@@SkillBuilder Most the older videos propose removing tanking and replacing it with lime render. Removing cement pointing and replacing it with lime mortar. Basically, in favour of vapour permeability. Later videos talk about damp proofing and waterproofing membranes. I suppose the next videos would be all in favour of airtightness.
i wouldn't say i thought rising damp was not real, but i did have some room for doubt in my mind based on the argument put forth. thanks for this video :)
I have never heard of rising damp. Does it happen to houses that have concrete slab foundations?
Usually no because that generation will have a polymer membrane going right across the slam with the walls built on top.
It's still possible to build up soil against the walls bridging the DPM and, as with all things, quality is important, holes don't help.
The film, and a lot of the comments mention the wall being made wet due to gutters and roof faults.
So no rising damp by design, but accidents can happen.
brilliant
As always, water need to be dealt with on the source before the last defense. Keep your gutters and drainage in good shape. Your windows need to be waterproof. Of course the roof need to be in perfect shape. If these things fail, you can have as many fancy space age materials built into your walls as you like and your walls will still rot or crumble.
Defence. Write it down so you don’t forget.
I'm still none the wiser Roger. Do I buy the book or not buy the book on rising damp?
Don't buy it because I told you what it says, heat the house and open the windows
Anybody got an opinion on slate chippings being scattered around the perimeter of the building? I have damp in the bottoms of the walls where the slate chippings are and it is my opinion that the slate chippings are causing it by holding moisture into the ground around the bottoms of the walls. The doubt is whether or not somebody put the slate chippings there to try to fix a damp problem which existed before the slate chippings were placed. I have dug my fingers into the slate chippings to see how deep they are and didn't find the bottom immediately suggesting they could be more than 2 inches deep. The side of the house with the slate chippings seems to have a ground level which is at least 6 inches higher than the other side which is dry! I don't like the look of the chippings so I'm likely removing them either way and I can't make it worse... but just wondered if anybody had a view on it.
It could be an attempt at a french drain.
On the basis that the other side of the house is dry, and you have checked all other potential issues I suggest you get digging and reduce the level by six inches and see what happens. If it doesn't dry out you have missed something.
As an old builder I new use to say to his customers just to have a bit of fun , no madam it’s not rising damp it’s just a bad case of sinking dryness . 😂 . Kind regards as always 👍
alot of them live in similar places to me also. where we have DPC, so we dont get it rising from the floor/skirting. but they have not put in any ventelation other then the windows so in the winter when its cold and you dont open them you get moisture on the walls in our older non insulated flat. we are 2nd floor so rising damp isnt the issue. but gravity causes that moisture in the winter to colect on the cold floor and walls and ruin our skiting when it drips down.
Stand a concrete block in a puddle and see what happens
Better still, stand Roger in a puddle and wait until his trousers are wet up to his tackle.
I did a bit of research a few years ago about how to implement internal wall insulation and the problems of interstitial damp which is a problem. I'm still not convinced if rising damp exists its more about temperature and dew point position. Can anyone explain how electrolysis based damp course works. I know a house which is over 100 years old with no barrier based damp course just electrolysis based which is a cable which is grounded and no damp.
it the water level, in the land the house sits on, and and winters, the ground gets cold, very cold, and you house warm, even if the heating not on as has not been for years, inside still not as cold as out side? and where there temp. difference, you are going to get, water droplets condensing, (and that's called damp), great breading ground mould, and all the stuff too?
Did that house have damp before the electrolysis barrier was fitted (RentoKill I Presume)? Short answer is electrolysis barriers don't work.
@02:15 'The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain'.
Can people confirm this is the correct phrase as my mrs says it STAYS mainly on the plain.
Thanks
“ Mr Rigsby , is there a damp problem ? “ ‘ I don’t think so Miss Jones , just the cat again ! ‘
Great rant Rodger. Bricks are porous so ...... 😊
There is no such thing as rising damp, just as there's no such thing as falling damp or sideways-moving damp. There's movement of moisture in all directions through substances that can carry it, yes, but moisture doesn't have this innate tendency to move upwards that the term "rising damp" implies.
At last someone with common sense.
You missed science lessons then.
@@flyerphil7708 Are you in the building trade ?
Rising damp escaped from a laboratory. 😂
Covid definitely did escape from the Wuhan lab though.
I saw a vid on yt a few years ago, proclaiming the same thing - i.e. that rising damp doesn't exist. This guy claimed to be an 'expert' (how I detest that much abused term) and showed a wall that was seriously salt contaminated - to the extent that the plaster was actually disintegrating. "Condensation" he claimed. I checked out this guy's background. He was a mining engineer. Never had any building experience whatsoever. 50 years in the building trade - 18 of which were in damp proofing and timber treatment - and even I wouldn't claim to be an 'expert.' Experienced, yes, but we are all learning, all the time, until the day we die.
Oh yes that is Peter Ward. He is a strange old boy for sure.
@@SkillBuilder That's the guy - couldn't remember his name. Thanks
Is there ever a situation where the solution to damp is to lag the walls with waterproof Portland cement? Maybe in a cellar but never above ground level. Yet this is precisely what many damp treatment companies do. This is equivalent to treating a man with an axe in his head by wrapping a bandage around it. Always endeavour to treat the problematic source first; gutters, sills, cracks in render. And if your house has solid walls and lime mortar never go near Portland cement or waterproof masonry paints; you’ll be creating a damp problem and paying for the privilege.
Gutters, sills, cracks in render - these are causes of penetrating damp - not rising damp.
Rising damp = capillarity = breakdown of surface tension, cohesion & adhesion. Simples. Just put a kitchen towel vertically into water.... what is a bit more difficult to explain is what is the force acting against gravity that pushes the water upwards?
White supremacy and transphobia I'd say....is the mysterious racist forces...going against the common good 😮
The water is not pushed upwards. It is pulled. All matter in the universe is attracted to all other matter in the universe. This is gravity. The mass of the wall pulls the water up through the tiny pores within it until equilibrium is reached between the pull of the walls and the pull of the earth which is why rising damp stops rising at a meter or less above ground level (depending on the wall material).
@@nickwinn7812 The 'gravity' in your example would be acting on all water molecules equally. There would be no differential forces, so no upward pull. In rising damp the earth's gravity pulling down is what stops the water rising > 1 metre or so, It cannot support its own weight.
In slovenia this is called capillary dampness. All of the old houses have it.
Had this on my property before I brought it. It cost thousands to be fixed. However I noticed the boiler was not working very good, the radiators were old and shot to bits. The old lady who lived there moved out due to difficulties in breathing and general ill health. I've moved in here put in a new boiler, good carpets cleaned out the old radiators. There is no excuse for black mould in your property it's disgusting .
Hi Rodger, on one of your videos a few weeks ago I posted a comment saying tradesmens hourly rates must be capped and I emphasised my frustration at why tradesmen earn/charge more than doctors/engineers (actual engineers, not the sky box ones etc). But I must say if all tradesmen had much skills and knowledge as you I'd have no problem with them earning too dollar. Just the other day I was charged £200 by a plumber just to replace the taps on my tub. I even had a couple of quotations. I live in Reading. The job took about 2 hours. I'd be very happy if you posted a video explaining your thoughts on the rates charged by plumbers, electricians, tradesmen, etc.
Have you ever owned a Ltd company? Have you got any idea about over heads? They may be charging you £200 so £100 per hour. Don’t mean the guy is getting that much. By the time you pay your over heads , you then get corporation tax, then you have personal tax once you draw that money out the company. And also your not paying for someone’s time your paying for the knowledge to be able to do the job quickly. What would you think if someone else charged you £50 an hour but it took them 4 hours ???
There'll be a minimum charge for a job like that, let's say half a day. A plumber will only manage to fit so many jobs into a day's work, and the true cost to him/her taking your job over another is the "opportunity cost" of missing a half day's labour elsewhere. A handyman would likely have been cheaper, as they tend to do a larger volume of smaller jobs and will be able to fit you in more easily. In future, you might want to save up a few jobs that might total a half or full day to get better value.
Did that include the cost of the taps? You got several quotes, presumably went with the cheapest and are now complaining about being over-charged. You entered the contract freely. No one forced you.
Of course there is. It was a fine sitcom with fine actors.
If there no such thing as rising damp why dont they stop fitting dpc to new builds?
They have to be fitted as they incorporate damp trays shedding water through weep vents.
They are a throwback from the later Victorian era. Builders seem to fit them largely out of habit. They made some sense back in the days of lime mortar and soft brick walls but they are pretty pointless with modern hard bricks and cement.
I can confirm that capillary action is a well documented scientific fact, or in other words that when a porous dry thingie comes in contact with a wet thingie, the dry thingie slurpy up the water and become wet.
In other news, the Earth is probably not flat.
Not so keen on the gimmicky video Roger. Have you sold-out?
When people ask if I have sold out I wonder what they think I was in. I was, and am, only in Skill Builder to make money and we try new things all the time to keep it fresh and interesting. I draw the line at saying or doing things I don't believe in but a few bits of b roll and some green screen is just supposed to make a boring subject more fun.
Oh there is rising damp...I'm sitting I'm an old office, where the damp literally came up through the concrete floor, I just put plastic down...a heavy grade, and poured a 50mm skim over it...that's 30 years ago. No damp is appearing now...I didn't really know what I was at..but it worked. I think I let the plastic up the walls a bit, and dry lined it...I remember putting damp proof course unde the timbers that were on the floor...I'm sure it's wet at that back or moist.. but who cares..its not showing...and it's there a long time.
Water can deep through cracks in concrete. Not the same as rising damp, if it exists
@Jhhhf4479 gas will come up through concrete, radon etc...regardless of whether it's cracked or not.
Damp Sam’s yer man.
Ah’ll si’ thi’.
5:52 is that holmes chapel aha
Hi Roger, Good to hear you tackle one of my favourite topics in your inimitable style. One of the notable features of people in the construction industry has always been the adamant dogmatic style of presentation, the tendency for so many to assert that what they think they know is cast iron fact beyond all dispute. This is just what all people do most of the time when what the claim is actually based on some form of cognitive delusion, this when the foundations of the knowledge have no proper rational basis, by this I mean that strange habit of serious critical testing of every suggestion to investigate what is actually happening and uncover the mechanical pathways involved, this is rarely done properly because it is so difficult and time consuming and almost never offers any real certainty. At best careful scientific investigation will expose some of the chains of cause and effect but some questions always remain. This does not suit many people because they believe their status depends on absolute veracity, any doubts or unanswered question cannot be allowed.
With that all behind us I will assert that in the part of the world where I live rising damp caused by actual groundwater penetration is very rare!, I will not say never, what is more common is bad external drainage causing wet patches on the outside walls which lose heat more rapidly while drying, this causes cold spots on the inside where in modern heated houses with vast amounts of water suspended in the air as water vapour some of it will condense on the cold patch inside. This then will look very much as if the water has come in from outside and indeed that could be true, at least in part. At this point I think I have said enough to conclude by saying that total denial of rising damp is no more sensible than total denial of condensation, in all reasonable probability there are many various reasons for mouldy damp patches in modern houses all of them have to be thoroughly investigated in each and every case and most cases will remain largely unresolved, you end up trying on remedy after another until the problem goes away but you never actually know what or why nor do you need to!.
Cheers, Richard
oddly listening to this , I'm currently working on a badly built Victorian house that 35 years ago i hacked the lime plaster off to 3ft drilled lots of holes and injected with the latest goo rendered with a good hard mix with waterproofer . did it work maybe ! or was it lowering the ground levels and installing drainage? or perhaps recent solid wall insulation providing a weather shield. Tomorrow i am patching some areas with lime plaster just like the stuff that did the job for 140 years before i bought the latest technology to the job. highly unlikely that i will be reporting back in another 35 years. Keep an open mind if you tread in a puddle you get a wet foot. To avoid that happening drain the puddle or wear wellies. if you need to dry out your wet foot probably best not to put it in a plastic bag
I used to own an 1890s terraced house built without a damp proof course, it had been fitted with an electro-osmotic device in the 1980s and had a plug near the fuse box that said "don't unplug". The house continued to have damp issues and to my mind this electro-osmotic device is snake oil, am I wrong?
No you're not wrong , total bollocks..
Roger. Experiment time in Roger's Lab. Get several bricks of different porosity, firing temperature and particle size. Say engineering brick > cinder block, Thermalite, 7kn block, fire brick, plasterboard, chalk, blotting paper ....and any other types. Dunk in tray of water for a period and film the relative rise of water. Then get various surfaces and coat them with waxes and degreasers to show the various aspects of surface tension by observing the degree of bead-up of the water droplets. Tilt the glass to show cohesion as they slide off at different rates. Finally, put various liquids between two pieces of glass held very close together. You will then have all you need to explain,and above all, PROVE that rising damp is a phenomenon. These simple experiments could be entertaining and stop you ranting. Another one could be insulation testing? ... Branded vs unbranded products (e.g. Screwfix No Nonsense range). I'm sure your subscribers have many things they have pondered for years and never investigated that would benefit from Lab time. Like your excellent StormDry vid ......
Every building needs good boots and a good hat.
Rising damp in Sweden? Yes, probably. But I get the impression that this is mostly confined to cities where it is difficult to drain properly around the houses. I am mostly working in rural settings or residential areas with single family houses and it is usually space for draining around the house fundaments. And most of these newer houses are built on 20 to 30 centimeters of macadam gravel and 10 to 30 centimeters of EPS or XPS insulation, that will drain and counteract capillary action. We do not have these large residential areas (at least not many) with terraced brick houses built 50 to 150 years ago (?) with limited drainage and little slope out from the houses (and I happen to think that limited or no slope out from the house and letting rainwater near the foundation is the main culprit). Nowadays it is even few houses built with basements here in Sweden, probably due to the problems with humidity. But a more or less efficient solution rather than increasing the heat is the use of dehumidifiers, in basements or even under the house in the crawl space. It usually takes considerably less energy than increasing the heating.
For anyone that doesn't believe in rising damp try walking around outside on a wet day in a pair of worn out shoes with a holes in the soles... I think you will notice the holes in your shoes DPC 😅. Issues of damp need proper diagnosis as there are many ways to detail a building, but in nearly all cases for the past 100 years a DPC to stop damp rising up from the ground will be a standard feature. It is still important to stop other forms of damp too such as condensation forming from cold spots / lack of ventilation, but that is simply a separate issue. Rising damp is a real thing.
Modern brick or concrete block is not very porous though
Rising damp , great series 😂😂
There's an excellent book, by Jonathan Hetreed,
The Damp House: A Guide to the Causes and Treatment of Dampness
Well worth a read if you're taking on an older property or dealing with a damp problem.
The problem is misdiagnosing. Research conducted by south bank university in 1999 effectively found that it is extraordinarily hard to replicate the effects of rising damp despite testing an enormous array of materials, this is likely where the myth that it doesn’t exist comes from. These results were also published in a bbc documentary in the same year. They did however conclude that a degree of rising damp is almost unavoidable in most British households and that it is to be expected that the first few courses of brick above the water table will always have more moisture than others. This level of moisture is most often not enough to cause “significant damage”. So in short, yes it exists. Mostly it causes little damage unless very specific conditions are met. My view is that predominantly most damp problems are caused by other issues, bad drainage, plumbing, ventilation etc but sadly these sorts of issues are frequently overlooked as not significant enough so people move straight to adding rods etc. interesting vid skill builder ❤
I think you will find that the research undertaken in the Building Technologies Department at South Bank Polytechnic was undertaken by one lecturer and wasn't peer reviewed.
As a piece of 'research' it was flawed. As for the BBC 'publishing' the results that is also not the case. What you are seeing there is confirmation bias.
@@SkillBuilder, the issue we find ourselves in is that your rebuttal is that the research wasn't peer reviewed, but your links to resources in the video are direct to a company who's whole business is in selling products to treat damp. They also disappointingly say that you can use an electrical moisture meter, which is a surfire way to get a load of nonsense data.
They're obviously not going to release a video or say anything on their website that might lead to doubt about the efficacy of their products or whether or not they're the right solution in the majority of cases. Indeed they show a number of images of "rising damp" on a rendered wall immediately next to the ground level - that's not rising damp, that's rain splashing of the ground.
Damp does rise, and anyone who disputes that is an idiot. You can (as everyone keeps saying) put various materials in water and see it rise, but damp companies will tell you almost anything is rising damp and can be fixed by their products and systems, as they want to sell their products and systems.
As someone with connections in various trades and companies, perhaps you could try and use those connections to get a peer reviewed study going to see how far damp will actually rise through brickwork, with various construction methods, mortar types etc.
In French, rising damp is "remontées d'humidité" or "humidité ascensionnelle" or "remontées d'humidité tellurique" or even "remontées capillaires". It seems to me that the UK was ahead of France in making damp-proof courses compulsory (later part of 19th century), versus the early 1960's for France. Where I come from in Brittany, that can be as rain lashed and humid a region as anywhere in the UK and where older houses have serious rising damp issues, you don't hear about rising damp deniers.
That is interesting and surprising that it took until the 1960's to make damp proof courses compulsory. That is a lot of buildings with needless damp problems.
the first wheel wasnt square, it was a log or two.
That was a spindle, or roller. A wheel rotates around a fixed axle. Big difference.
W in tf is TH-cam suggesting this for? Lord have mercy
Ranting Roger in full flow here 😂