If you have ever climbed out of the bath, towelled off and then hung the towel over the edge of the tub and it happens to rest in the bathwater, the results are basically what rising damp is all about, except its more serious than a wet towel. You can observe the same phenomenon if you were to set a stick of chalk in water, the water would “wick” up the chalk. Without damp proofing in Eastbourne the same thing can happen to the walls in your home.
Rising damp will occur in any porous material unless the material has been waterproofed, brick and masonry are porous.
With the density of concrete and its dead weight one would think that the wicking action would be far less than what will happen when the towel hangs in the water, the sad truth is, it’s just the opposite. Water will wick higher in materials with smaller voids than it will when the pores are large. Rising damp can easily go a meter or more up a wall, water would never go that high up the open poured towel.
There is no getting around the fact that walls get wet close to ground level. This is due to splashing of rainwater and surface water. Rising damp has nothing to do with the water table; it will occur regardless of whether the house is situated on high ground or in a swale. Water is always on the surface, a wall is usually embedded deeply in the ground, sitting on a foundation. With the small pores of masonry compared to the larger pores in soil, the soil drains quickly but the wall wicks the water which stays in the material for some time, hence we having rising damp.
In discussing rising damp, the water is not puddle as if the house had a leaky roof or a faulty gutter system; it’s almost never wet to the touch. It would be impossible for the porous material of the wall to wick water at the bottom and then expel it as it rises, no, it continues to fill the pores; it does not come out of the wall higher up. The solution is to build the home with damp proofing in Eastbourne, and most have since the 1920s.
It is quite possible that damp course failure or bridging will occur which renders the damp proofing in Eastbourne ineffective. Cavity Tech Systems Ltd can solve the problems associated with rising damp.
