The common most reported cause of building failure is dampness and yet it continues to be the most misdiagnosed. Millions are spent each year on fruitless work that does not fix the underlying problem.
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The choice and quality of many new building materials often go unchecked or rigorously tested.
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A moisture meter does not measure moisture. It measures electrical conductivity. It can tell you if a wall is dry, which can be useful. It can tell you that a wall might be damp. That is all. Ask the manufacturers. If you want to know if there really is damp, and what’s causing it, you have to look a lot further.
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Legal cases worth millions of pounds are being won and lost on the evidence of a moisture meter. Why, when real evidence can be obtained?
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Every year thousands of mortgages are given out on the condition that expensive remedial damp-proofing work be undertaken. Work that has been recommended by... the people who will be carrying it out. Work which rarely addresses the real causes of the dampness problems the property might (or, as is often the case, might not) have had.
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Damp-proof courses don’t ‘fail’. They get bridged, or people dig holes in them or poorly lay them, but they don’t ‘fail’. So why inject a new one?
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Condensation is not a cause of damp, it’s a symptom. If the damp manifests as condensation, that’s where you start looking, not where you stop.
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Rising damp or penetrating damp aren’t causes of damp either they are mechanisms that describe the movement of moisture.
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Dampness can move in all directions in building materials.
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Asthma is a killer. Britain is now the asthma capital of Europe. Asthma’s link to mould is becoming the asbestos of the 21st century, both in terms of health and litigation. If you clear damp from a home you cut the incidence of asthma by half.
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If eight people are placed in a dwelling designed for four, that dwelling is likely to become damp.
