Masonry Water repellents have grown up

  Before I begin I should admit that in the past, I’ve been a bit critical of water repellent treatments applied to walls. Penetrating damp is usually more to do with ropy pointing and leaking gutters than porous walls and it’s essential to get these fundamentals right first.  Sometimes though, in exposed locations, moisture tracks […]

What the hell do these moisture meter readings actually mean? or, Have I got rising damp or not?

  Electrical Moisture meters for damp diagnosis – oh yes. A thing that raises an eyebrow amongst some independent surveyors is the way we so called ‘specialists’ seem happy to diagnose rising damp, or damp of any kind, using nothing more than our eyes and a conductivity moisture meter. “Ha; I can get a reading […]

The Electrical moisture meter and salts – the pariahs of the damp surveyor?

The following is a guest post by Graham Coleman 0f Remedial Technical Services. Graham is a leading expert in the science of damp and timber preservation see about Graham I’m delighted to host this article – enjoy.   When one starts to trawl through articles and the Internet, it becomes very clear that to some, […]

Rubbing salt into the wounds

The following is a short article extracted from The RICS journal. I have only made it available on my blog for discussion by the linkedin damp diagnosis group members, following a request by our moderator Phil (we’ll be sharing a cell together if I get into trouble for it;) I will read it properly over […]

Damp problems solved “the green way” (or how to spend a pile of cash for nothing at all).

I was asked to have a look at a cottage, just off the A1, near Pontefract last week. Arriving on site, I was greeted by my clients; the owners. A couple in late middle age, with two dogs and a cat. I thought this was a standard damp survey, which usually means checking for all […]

Copyright © 2010 Preservation Expert. Legal Stuff: All the advice and information in the posts on my blog is made in good faith and is based on my experience and knowledge at the time of writing. However, nobody is infallible and whilst I’m confident that most of what I write about preservation issues is accurate, there’s a good chance there’ll be an error or two somewhere. I do change my mind about stuff, as I gain more experience. In view of this you must make your own decisions on whether to follow any advice I write and think about this; I could be wrong. No responsibility will be accepted by the author for any losses anyone may suffer as a result of any mistake or for the consequence of any action you take as a result of reading this blog. If you do suffer a loss, resulting from anything I’ve written, a verbal heartfelt apology will be your only compensation.