Sign 1 / 6Tide marks & staining
Brown or yellow lines creeping up your walls usually mean rising damp: moisture drawn up from the ground, carrying salts that stain the decoration and break it down.
Behind your walls
What causes damp, and how we treat it.
What's really going on behind that tide mark, and how we put it right.
Living-room wall · as foundDiagnosis · damp surveyAfter treatment
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Moisture
HighRaisedDry
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01The risk
What happens if damp is left untreated
Left untreated, moisture and ground salts break plaster and mortar down from the inside and push through every fresh coat of paint. It keeps spreading until the cause is treated.
- Your home Blown plaster, crumbling mortar, and skirting and timber left to rot.
- Your health Damp air feeds black mould, a genuine risk for children, older people and anyone with asthma or allergies.
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02The cause
Three kinds of damp, three different fixes
Treat the wrong one and the money's wasted. So we diagnose first, with professional damp-reading equipment, and tell you straight what we find.
- Rising damp Ground moisture drawn up the brickwork, leaving tide marks and salts low on the wall.
- Penetrating damp Rain getting in from outside, through a leaking gutter, a weathered wall or around a window frame.
- Condensation Warm, moist air meeting cold surfaces. Often fixed with ventilation such as a PIV unit, not building work.
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03The fix
How we treat damp and replaster the wall
For rising damp we strip contaminated plaster back to sound brick, inject a chemical damp proof course and fix a 3mm meshed membrane to keep moisture still left in the brickwork away from the new plaster. Then we replaster to a smooth finish, ready to decorate.
- ✓30-year guarantee on treated areas
- ✓Smooth finish, ready to decorate
- ✓A fixed price in writing before we start
