Rising damp discovered - please need advice

[jeds]

The fact is rising damp certainly does exist.

And why don't Dutch houses suffer from it?

Of course they do. Look up Lubelli or Van Hees.

The walls in the photo definitely will have rising dampness. But it's not causing any issue. The walls have no coatings so evaporation is high. If you rendered or plastered the walls in that situation it wouldn't last long.

Look up some of the work by Dr Zhongyi Zhang at Portsmouth Uni. He has no vested interest and his research is interesting. He has reported on the science and measurement of rising dampness in buildings. He evaluated the mechanisms and equations used in predicting rising dampness and compared them to real examples. His research showed the equations to have a high degree of accuracy. Look him up and decide if you think he might be right or the ex brickie trying to sell a book might be right.

And don't get me wrong. I'm an ex brickie myself so I'm not slagging the bloke off because of that. He just got a few things wrong, but once you've put everything on the line and made a mint out of saying 'rising damp is a myth', it's quite difficult to suddenly look up and say, well, ok, rising damp does exist, but not as much as people think.

 

[Johnmelad]

Elaine Blackett-Ord, chair of the Register of Architects Accredited in Building Conservation, has also spoken out against rising damp, saying it was as rare as ‘rocking-horse ****’.

 

[masona]

The fact is rising damp certainly does exist.

And why don't Dutch houses suffer from it?

Of course they do. Look up Lubelli or Van Hees.

Isn't that because most of the Dutch houses are below sea level?

 

[tony1851]

The wall in the pic above is clearly an embankment/retaining wall for some sort of culvert or similar. As such, the brickwork will have been specified to consist of hard and durable materials due to the severe degree of exposure.

The bricks will almost certainly be well-fired, or engineering-type, which have known, specified low-water absorption rates. The mortar will be a hard, cement-based mortar (or, if the wall was 19th-century, maybe an hydraulic lime mortar with a pozzolan added to improve durability) Such mortars are known for being highly-moisture resistant. That is why the tide mark doesn't go more than a few inches above the water.

As for no dpcs in Holland, that is ridiculous - Holland is a low-lying country and will have rising damp just as we do. I have never been to Holland, but out of interest I googled 'rising damp in buildings, Netherlands', and loads of stuff came up. It appears they do have rising damp in Holland.

 

[tony1851]

Elaine Blackett-Ord, chair of the Register of Architects Accredited in Building Conservation, has also spoken out against rising damp, saying it was as rare as ‘rocking-horse s**t’.

Just because some woman with a double-barrel name, and the head of some architect's cosy group, declares that rising damp does not exist, doesn't make it so. She has jumped on to the 'myth' bandwagon like many people who should know better.

As per jeds in an earlier post, the conservation lobby have bought into this, and the whole thing becomes self-perpetuating.

 

[stuart45]

The examples in the videos were houses that would have DPC's when originally built.
People are claiming that Holland has no rising damp problems, but probably have no real knowledge of Dutch construction.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Holland is a low-lying country and will have rising damp just as we do. I have never been to Holland, but out of interest I googled 'rising damp in buildings, Netherlands', and loads of stuff came up. It appears they do have rising damp in Holland.

Or maybe they just have people claiming that there is rising damp.