DPC Installation in Sunderland

In a Sunderland cottage the rising damp is not only on the outside walls. The internal walls dividing front room, back room and kitchen stand straight on the ground too, and often show the same tide mark and salts. A proper survey reads every wall in the cottage, including the spine wall and the chimney breast, because injecting the outside walls alone leaves damp climbing through the middle of the house. Chimney breasts need extra care, since soot and old coal-fire salts can hold moisture and look like rising damp when they are not. We also look at where the cottage meets any rear extension, because the two often have damp courses at different heights and the join between them is a weak spot that needs its own attention.

Plenty of cottages have had their original boarded floors replaced with concrete at some point, and if that slab was poured higher than the old damp course, or without a membrane lapped up the wall, it pushes moisture into the brick above. We check floor levels against the injection line before we start. Because a cottage is compact, we usually work room by room so you can keep living in it, with dust sheets, the rooms not being worked on kept clear, and rubbish taken away each day. In most cottages we finish the injection and the strip-out early in the job, so the noisy and dusty part is over quickly and the rest is the quieter work of replastering.