Rising Damp? Myth?

woodar

Hi, this is my first ever forum visit but I'm in need of some advice please. I noticed damp along the bottom of several ground floor walls in my house and called in a couple of companies to look at it. Both tested with protimeters and told me I had rising damp and gave me quotes for a DPC. I got hold of the deeds for my property though and found that there was an almost out of date guarantee for an existing DPC so I contacted the company who installed it. Their surveyor came out and did the protimeter testing and also calcium carbide moisture testing and declared that it wasn't rising damp but may be hygroscopic plaster/condensation/humidity. So my problem is that all 3 have a vested interest in their diagnosis so who do I believe and what do I do next? Any advice gratefully received.

Lime_is_best

I have dealt with a case where there was no original dpc within a party wall and one contractor injected a chemical dpc from one side of the party wall with associated re-plastering for their client (call this house / client A) which resulted in dampness becoming more apparent on the other side of the party wall in the other house (call this client / house . Some time later the client in house B had a different contractor inject a chemical dpc with associated re-plastering. What followed next was dampness appeared on both sides of the party wall above the level of re-plastering and both clients / houses re-called their seperate contractors and both undertook re-injection and both undertook re-plastering.

Why on earth would you keep replastering with sand and cement, install a DPC when if both sides had been lime plastererd it would of dried out the trapped salts would freely travel through the lime its total fraud to install a DPC into brick work