Did anyone deal with Kenwood damp proofing?

One_Five_Four wrote: »

Another useful link here:

I'm sorry for perhaps going slightly off topic but I couldn't bite my tongue any longer and the content of the above website is making me shake my head in absolute disbelief. By this author stating that rising dampness is a myth, by definition, they are calling me a liar and saying that the mainstream service that I offer is fraudulent, using a fictitious phenomena to make money out of people.

The above website is an absolute load of rubbish. Do you honestly think that the damp proofing industry would have been allowed to continue for as long as it has if "Rising dampness" could be so easily and readily proven non-existent?

The website has been written with so many obvious ommisions of scientific fact that it may have just been written by a 5 year old except that if you had no understanding of the problem first hand, it may actually be deemed as believable.

The industry is a huge part of modern day construction with the majority of the companies offering services within the newbuild as well as existing structure markets.

Firstly, the majority of research within the damp proofing industry is carried out by the UK Building Research Establishment who are an independent institution that offer resources, training, certification and testing in every aspect of construction. Do you not think that if rising dampness was a pack of lies, the main construction research institute in the UK wouldn't have sounded the whistle?
Even RICS, the royal institute of chartered surveyors and the institute of structural engineers are fully aware of rising dampness and its causes and offer recommendations and methods of eradication.
These are people that are in no way connected to the damp proofing industry but are independent construction professionals whos work provides the backbone for construction practices and materials in the UK and abroad. You ask them to read the above website and see what they say!

It is true that rising dampness is often mis-diagnosed as there are numerous other possibilities contributing to the cause and passage of dampness in structures and it takes a good surveyor with the right equipment and experience to be able to make the correct diagnosis.

The next question you may ask yourself is "What is rising dampness?"
Wikipedia has a whole page that very nicely describes everything so it's worth reading on there rather than me writing it all out here but in a nutshell; "Rising damp is the common term for the slow upward movement of water in the lower sections of walls and other ground-supported structures by capillary action."

Basically speaking and you can do this in your own home, put a bath sponge in a shall bowl of water and watch what it does. It will absorb the water up through the sponge due to capillary action. Bricks (and mortar joints) are very similar to sponges in this sense as the capillaries contained within allow passage of moisture the same way. Obviously there are variables such as the amount of ground water present, the type of brick and size of capillaries but it is common sense and an undeniable fact of physics.

I have worked in this industry for over 20 years now and I have seen a lot of people wrongly diagnosing rising dampness, I can put my hands up and say I have more than likely wrongly diagnosed it myself during my career but that is not to say it does not exist.

There is such a mass of "factual" information out there that you can easily find on the subject and I would ask that you please read whatever you can on the subject rather than "nonfactual" garbage as displayed in the website above.

There is so much more I could write on the subject but I feel that I'm ranting on too much so I'll leave it to you but I just wanted to show an argument to the contrary of the previous post.
As a footnote, I would like to say that the main problem within the damp & timber industry is not whether these things exist, it's the choice of company to carry out rectification works.
As with any industry, there are cowboys out there that bring our profession into disrepute but I have always found that customer reviews are "normally" the best way to gauge the professionalism of a company and the service that you can expect to receive. DO look online for reviews, DO ask about companies on forums such as these but DO NOT rely solely on memberships to certain organisations and regulatory bodies to guarantee a good, unbiased and professional service.

Please feel free to contact me to discuss any aspect of dampness and I will do my best to offer good old fashioned free advice.

Rant over!

I paid £60 for a damp survey when I bought my house and I think it was really good value. It was clearly tailored for the property in question rather than just a tick box job. This helped in my negotiations in getting the vendor to pay for the damp treatment and certainly saved me many times the money I paid for it. I would say go for the most thorough damp proof survey rather than just going for a free one.

The company I used was a small independent company that were PCA members.