If you are a home or business owner, you may have heard of an insidious problem that plagues structures called ‘rising damp’. Let’s begin today by understanding just what rising damp is, along with its causes, then we will look at ways to identify it and deal with it.
Try placing a dry sponge in a saucer of shallow water, then leaving it to set for a few minutes. When you come back you will find that the formerly dry sponge has sucked the water up and is now damp! That’s a very basic demonstration of how rising damp happens, a porous material absorbs moisture upward through a process called capillary action, except in our case, the material is your building’s walls.
While they may seem perfectly solid, common building materials like wood, bricks, and mortar are actually porous and can draw water up from the ground just like a sponge. The resulting dampness can cause severe physical damage to a building as well as create health risks for residents, so it’s a problem that needs to be quickly addressed! Let’s take a look at some of the common signs of rising damp so you can check for it around your property.
Your Walls Have Wet Patches – First off, we should note that rising damp occurs on the ground floor of a building, If you have wet patches on the walls of higher floors it’s from other related issues like penetrating damp or condensation. When damp or wet patches appear on the walls of the ground floor, then rising damp is most likely the culprit. These wet patches will occur on the lower parts of the wall where capillary action draws moisture up from the wet ground beneath the structure.
Your Walls Have Tidemarks – One of the most obvious signs of rising damp are the presence of tidemarks on your walls. These take the form of horizontal discoloured marks on your walls about 1 meter off the ground. The tidemarks are caused by salts that migrate up from the floor along with the moisture. When the water evaporates it leaves behind a telltale, often brownish discolouration caused by the salts.
Your Walls Have Black Mould Growing On Them – Another common sign of rising damp is the presence of black mould growing on your walls, which is not only unsightly but can present a major health risk! Black mould loves wet surfaces, if it’s happening on your ground floor then it’s probably the result of rising damp.
Now the question remains, what to do about your rising damp problem? There are a variety of methods available for putting a stop to rising damp, to discover the best course of action for your property just call us, London Damp Surveys at 0207 305 5997, to come perform a survey! Our highly experienced surveyors use cutting-edge equipment to perform our damp inspections, ensuring they are done to the highest standards to help you stop rising damp!
