This is going to be a long post, and we make no apology for it, because we feel it needs to be looked at in depth as this is an area which has been, in our opinion, heavily exploited for far too now, and many beautiful period buildings have been severely damaged, (along with owners bank balances!) from some of the modern day, damaging nonsense that has been used on period buildings, usually by people with absolutely no idea nor understanding/care of these superb older 'Ladies' and how they must be treated!

 

According to the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in Feb 2025: "OED's earliest evidence for the noun rising damp is from 1859, in the writing of L. Feuchtwanger".

 

Straight away we hit controversy because searching for "writer L Feuchtwanger" on wikipedia, also in Feb 2025, returned a page stating the writer L, Feuchtwanger "was a German/Jewish novelist and playwright" who wasn't born until the 7th of July 1884! 

 

So, according to two independent, non-connected and respected sources, the origins of "Rising damp" would appear to be from the writings of a German/Jewish novelist & playwright (not exactly a buildings expert) who wasn't even born until 25 years after He alledgedly came up with it in his head and put it in one of his manuscripts, before publishing it!

 

In other words:

A story? A fiction? A fallacy? A myth? or just a wild imagination?

make your own mind up.

 

But of course there's always the question: can we really trust all we read online these days?

 

However, long before that and following the departure of the Romans from Britain, the Anglo Saxons realised that building round houses by sinking posts into the ground resulted in the bottoms of those posts rotting.

 

The end grain of timber is always the most absorbant part (just as Mother Nature intended it to be); let's not forget that what we today call "timber" or "a post" is nothing more than a once living, now dead tree which has been passed through a sawmill.

 

But it's been treated to ensure it won't rot! - take a new fence post, cut it and look at the 'inside' where the magic chemical treatment hasn't penetrated - you'll see a dead tree.

 

Prior to that it was a living tree which absorbed ground moisture and important salts and nutrients contained in the earth, through it's roots and  up the internal 'grain' (it's capillaries) in order for it to grow and stand strong in all weather conditions whilst absorbing atmospheric CO² and giving us back valuable oxygen in return.

 

Yet today we still see timber fence posts being sunk into the ground, and yet today we still think they won't rot. A fast setting  "postcrete" mix is even added around the base of that post to further increase stability.

 

 

However, considering that cement/concrete traps moisture against any timber and therefore assists and promotes timber rot, it begs a simple question: Will we ever learn?)

 

We charge for our Surveys.

 

The Damp 'special people' always provide free Surveys; and surprisingly these Surveys don't take very long, yet always seem to 'find' damp issues.

 

We charge for our Surveys, and this very short video shows you very  plainly why we do: this lady was very happy with our visit!

 

Plus of course saving Her property from further damage being forced up into other areas by the completely wrong, and very expensive recommendations from the Free survey 'special people'

Damp Proof Course. (DPC)

The book shown above, titled “an essay on by-laws”; authored by W.G.Lumley, and published in 1877 by Knight & Co. contained model by-laws issued by the board of trade, the Education Department, and the local Government Board. It consisted of 428 pages compiled in 9 chapters.

 

On page 348 it states: “He shall cause every wall of such building to have a proper damp proof course of sheet lead, asphalte or slates laid in cement, or of other durable material impervious to moisture, beneath the level of the lowest timbers, and at a height of not less than 6 inches above the surface of the ground adjoining such wall."

 

This has remained unchanged now for nearly 150yrs with the only differences today being building regulations state the

minimum height as 150mm above external ground height; 150mm being the metric equivalent of 6 inches and the Damp Proof Course itself today is generally a plastic based layer.

 

 

Given that the “essay” itself was published in 1877 it is fair to say that the by-law itself had already been passed by the time of writing and then publishing this essay: presumably at some point in the 1870's. So this would appear to be the often confused origins of the "damp proof course" regulations.

 

In 5 decades where we have dug down to the foundations of many period buildings for various reasons (there's even a few vids on our youtube channel) and seen many DPC's, we have never seen a failed DPC, yet the Damp 'special people' will always poke their two pronged meter into your walls internally and immediately tell you that your DPC has failed, without ever even seeing it!

 

Damp proof courses of slate were sometimes installed in buildings as far back as 1800, but mostly in buildings constructed and paid for by the more wealthy of the times.

 

Something to think about:

The world today has turned into, sadly, a place where everything is 'needed' now! and must happen now! People jump straight online to Google (giggle as we call it) looking for a magic chemical to fix things.

 

We've cropped the following pics as we are certainly not picking on any particular company here, they are nothing more than some screenshots to demonstrate the point we are making, but the following three screenshots showing a typical example of just how long the course of study that the 'special people' do & how much previous experience with buildings they need to have, before they take thousands of your hard earned money.

 

The Power of Nightmares is a 3 stage process.

 

Stage 1 - Create your Nightmare.

So after just a couple of days of practical training, and having never even having hammered a nail in a piece of wood straight, they turn up at your home stating they are a "Specialist Surveyor" and then stick their two pronged meter (called a protimeter) into your interior decorating, in your home, with "traffic light" coloured indicators to turn your "nightmare" into your reality.

 

These protimeters are 'resistivity' meters which work by passing a low voltage electrical current from one positive prong (the cathode) to the other negative prong (the annode) through the wall, and we all know that electricity and water do not mix so surely if the wall is actually wet, something should go pop!

 

However salt is a natural conductor of electricity, so water becomes conductive to a low Voltage Direct Current (eg: protimeter batteries) of electricity once salt is added to it.

 

Gypsum plasters are so called because they are based on Gypsum.

 

Gypsum is "Calcium Sulphate Dihydrate"; Calcium Sulphate Dihydrate is a natural hygroscopic earth salt. Plasters, bricks, mortars and renders are made from earth materials containing earth salts, and a lot of sands used in mortars, plasters and render mixes also contain earth salts.

 

So what exactly are they measuring?

Is it really any wonder that their protimeter fires up the red light!

 

Stage 2 - Compound your created Nightmare.

Then they go off and prepare a floorplan, with lots of red ink (red signifying 'Stop! / Danger! of course) used to highlight the areas they have identified as needing 'special' treatments, which they send you, along with the specification, and not forgetting the price of course.

 

 3- 'Cure' your created Nightmare.

Here's an interesting question for you: why do they hack off all of the internal plasterwork back to bare brick, and then first render over those bricks with a cement based render containing a waterproofing additive in it, before plastering over that newly applied waterproof render with a Gypsum (salt) based finish plaster, which absorbs and retains moisture, yet they drill all their holes to inject their magic chemicals into your wall, on the outside!

 

A screen maybe?

 

We're not into Nightmares.

Now here's our thinking, and please do remember that we haven't paid out a few hundred pounds to have the advantage of a couple of days training on the 'special people's' sales pitch; we much prefer to deal with nature and physics coupled with a mere half a century of knowledge, skills and experience. 

 

Capillary Action.

Capillary action has existed since the dawning of time and it is the undisputable scientific process where moisture/water is drawn upwards, sideways and every way! throughout porous materials according to the directions that the natural capillaries run, such as timber, bricks, mortars and plasters in buildings, due to the forces of cohesion and adhesion.

 

We'll make this simple:

Imagine you buy a brand new bath sponge, you take it home and remove the outer plastic wrapping, your new sponge is lovely and dry thanks to the plastic wrapping it comes in. Then you gently place it down dry onto a shallow tray of water, initially your new sponge will float but will then it will quickly start to absorb that water from the bottom up, and sink into the same water it floated on.

 

So according to the damp 'special people', who've made it through a couple of days training, it's clearly suffering from rising damp because it's DPC has failed!

 

But surely the water in the tray being absorbed by the sponge through capillary action is "the cause", so if you empty the water from the tray, dry the tray and don't replenish it, then allow the sponge to naturally 'dry out' again, the cause has been "fixed" and the 'Power of Nightmares' opportunity has gone, and at little/no cost.

 

Or you could simply throw a towel over it to hide it from sight (aka: 'tanking' - afterall many people today, sadly, accept 'out of sight, out of mind'), but this fixes absolutely nothing, other than the towel progressively becoming, over time, more and more affected by the moisture transferred, again via capillary action, from the sponge to the towel to the point where mould and mildew start to grow on that towel, resulting in a situation far worse than it was initially.

 

In the very same way, moisture will rise up behind the new render works applied by the 'special people', because the true cause has only been masked over (in other words: hidden long enough for the guarantee to expire) and not fixed.

 

Here's another vid of a job we corrected, but this one had been 'tanked' externally which meant that capillary action had brought the moisture up, externally to around 5ft 6inches from ground height, meaning the bricks in the structurally supporting bay piers (with another 3 floors above the one we were working on!) had spalled due to freezing and thawing over the winters.

 

The very first thing we noticed was the mains drainage gulley, so immediately we had our suspicions about it - shame that the 'special people' didn't seem to care! 

Here's a couple of pics from internal 'tanking' carried out on

another property - not very nice either!