No matter how attractive a ‘free’ damp and timber survey appears to be - especially when money is tight, or you’ve just spent a tidy sum on a ‘Homebuyer’ report that didn’t really give any advice except to ask for other people’s opinions - in my experience the chances of ‘something for nothing’ providing you with a worthwhile assessment and an effective cure for your problems are remote; often times nil. 

And those companies who peddle ‘refundable’ survey costs should they find work to do as a result of that survey are simply exploiting their prospective client’s gullibility. At least, a ‘free’ survey is readily distinguishable as an absurdity; the second ruse simply takes advantage of cash-strapped naivety and forlorn hope.

There are two elements driving the damage these surveys cause.  There is the obvious one, whereby a cynical operative, not even bothering to justify his recommendations, simply attempts to relieve the unwary of their hard-earned cash, safe in the knowledge that a good proportion of the people he sees will not question his recommendations.

And then there is the other, probably more common situation where the damp-proofing ‘surveyor’ simply does not know what he is talking about but is vaguely aware that somewhere along the line his products or systems have a tenuous relationship to the problems associated with dampness in houses.  This is not to say he is intrinsically dishonest, or is setting out to deceive: he may actually believe in his own sales patter.  It is simply that his examinations and subsequent diagnoses of any problems are severely restricted by his lack of knowledge and imagination; and his prescriptions can only ever be those his particular products are designed to address.

Thus, he would have you believe that whatever is wrong with your house can be remedied simply by employing him or his company, in a similar manner to those exotic products of the last century, which were guaranteed to make you taller, happier, wiser or richer.  Advertisements claiming omnipotence for such products have long been banned but a man telling you his services are both ‘free’ and valuable can still come into your house and convince you his snake oil will rub away your worries.

Thus, when you marry the suspect motives of such people with a disregard for the laws of physics and lack of even an elementary knowledge of building pathology you have an example of one unsighted person leading another into penury. The first carries a moisture meter in lieu of a Labrador dog and the second is blinded by the blandishments and half-truths that are, unfortunately, all too common in the damp-proofing industry.

Yes, well I would say that wouldn’t I. However, a little meat for the bones may illustrate the argument better:

When dampness is seen, or suspected, in a building, most people, and this includes many so called ‘damp and timber surveyors’, automatically assume that the moisture affecting their internal walls, chimneybreasts or ceilings etc is entering the building from the outside; and this suits the damp-proofing industry superbly because they sell and install products that are designed to combat this type of situation.

However, in more than half the cases I see, this assumption is wrong, and the offending moisture is actually produced inside the house – it is produced by the occupants themselves, and simply can’t get out effectively.

This is not always so of course: sometimes it is entering from the outside and there is even a very remote chance that rising dampness may occasinally be present.  In some of these cases, the remedial industry’s products may be effective but even then, their salesmen’s methods of ‘diagnosis’, and their suggestions for a remedy, will be centred on the products that that individual or company sells. Even though these, on an individual basis, can often be less than worthless in effecting a cure.

These ‘surveyors’ do not seek the true cause of any problems: such things are an irrelevance; they simply strive to reassure the unsuspecting client their services are required, and then to sell their questionable products.  And as the client often knows no better, then who better to sell to. Thus an unwanted, largely unneeded, and invariably costly relationship is entered into.  The client suffers, the house is ravaged and the salesman collects his commission.

Two surveys I carried out recently emphasises the above quite succinctly. The first one, which took place in a small Cambridgeshire village, involved a roofing contractor, who although not strictly a member of the remedial fraternity was nevertheless dealing with a problem of dampness. His only suggestion for solving the client’s problems involved replacing a perfectly good roof with another one, which for all I know would also have been perfectly good. This rather large undertaking wasn’t actually going to solve anything vis-à-vis the dampness but replacing rooves was what this man did for a living, and he wasn’t aware of any horizons beyond his vocation.

The next case, in the Edinburgh suburbs, involved a nationwide company, who had mis-diagnosed a significant dampness problem some five years before.  At that time they had installed an injection damp-proofing course, which was wholly inappropriate and which had failed to address the root cause of moisture, which was penetrating into the house via a southerly facing wall. A problem that had now returned with a vengeance. 

Notwithstanding the previous ineffectuality of their work, they had returned to the house under the terms of their guarantee, and injected the walls again. The fact that the problem would never respond to an injection damp proofing system was of little concern to them – that’s what they do, so that’s what they did.  At least they were still in business, and were thus in a position to re-attend and repeat their mistakes!

Returning to the first case, the enthusiastic roofer.  What the house was actually suffering from was condensation, which had been appearing on the front wall, in a first floor bedroom.  It wasn’t affecting the whole wall; it was just showing as odd, almost symmetrically located patches high up, just below ceiling level. On closer examination these patches proved to be where the ‘through’ stones in the front wall abutted the internal wall faces, and this was causing ‘cold’ spots. As is sometimes the case with cold spots, condensation was forming on them to such a degree that ‘free’ water was running down the bedroom wall.

The roofer’s conclusion was that the guttering was leaking, and that the roof was also letting in water. He didn’t know for this sure, but hey, there was water on the walls, which must be coming in from somewhere; and anyway, that’s what he did for a living. Seven thousand pounds was the estimate for replacing the roof.

(For those of you who aren’t familiar with ‘through’ stones, the drawing below might shed a little light on them.  These stones, which span the wall from front to back, are invariably used in solid walls (those without a cavity) and they provide structural stability by tying the internal and external leaves together.  In this particular case the external walls were stone, and the internal leaves were brick; but the wall could equally have been constructed of stone only. If the wall is constructed entirely from brick, it is the way the bricks are laid - the ‘bond’ - that ties the leaves together.  More modern, cavity walls use wall-ties, which are usually made from either metal or plastic.  As stone and brick are poor insulators, the cold external temperatures are easily transmitted from outside to in and affect the inside walls. Hey presto – cold spots!).  This type of construction can also allow penetrating moisture, especially if the pointing is ineffective and/or made from sand and cement.

Showing position of through stones in a brick and stone wall -

typical Edwardian construction

Once the problem was correctly diagnosed the clients set about curing their condensation problems, which they did with ease, and the last I heard everything was back to normal (they spent the seven thousand on other, worthwhile considerations).  As I was leaving, the lady of the house confided that they had almost gone ahead with the re-roof because they were convinced the roofer ‘knew what he was talking about’, and they too thought that as the water was so copious, it must be coming in from the outside.

The Edinburgh job was another classic case of mis-diagnosis.  The rising dampness noted all those years ago wasn’t actually the problem at all; it never had been.  What was happening was simple: the sand and cement render on the affected wall was old, badly cracked and full of hollows; and this was allowing wind-driven rain to access the wall behind.  Gravity ensured it trickled downwards where it then soaked into the base of the wall and through into the internal plasterwork. 

But the salesman with the nationwide company concerned didn’t seem to know that this type of render on southerly facing, solid walls is a recipe for disaster.  Why should he, his job is to sell damp proofing courses and other chemicals; and, a few years down the line when these elixirs fail to have the desired effect, to fob the client off with the easiest and cheapest solution that will keep them quiet/baffled/give up/go away/move out.  If all else fails, it can always be blamed on ‘condensation’; although why it should be condensation now but not when they initially diagnosed rising dampness is usually discreetly veiled. 

The above are only two of the hundreds of examples of ineptitude and cynicism I see on a regular basis and the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of property issues I encounter in my daily life could be resolved without recourse to a damp proofing contractor.  They often simply involve life-style changes by the house-owner; the owner’s DIY skills can solve them; or a local builder can help them out of their fix, often at a minimal cost.

Even when considerable expense is eventually required, as it was in the Edinburgh case for instance, where the affected wall needed re-rendering with lime mortar, at least the clients can look forward to a correct, long-term solution for their ills.

Money may be tight in these credit-crunched days, but asking someone who is not only unqualified, but also has a distinct, and private, agenda to help you decide on the best course of action is, in my opinion at least, a sure way to extend your woes.