Just venting really, but has anyone ever had a good experience with this lot?

I have some very minor damp below the bay window. I’m pretty certain I know what the problem is but wanted a second opinion from a firm that could identify, report and organise all of the repairs for me.

The Surveyor is from what is supposed to be a big and reputable firm. They don’t advertise themselves as anything other than specialising surveyors. He spends 10mins inside the room and prods around with his damp meter before proclaiming they need to strip all the plaster, insert a chemical injected DPC and re-plaster with a cement render.

He hasn’t even been outside at this point, so now I’m thinking he’s a salesman and nothing like a proper Surveyor.

I ask if he needs to see outside. He doesn’t. I take him out anyway and ask him about the rotten window cill, the raised external ground level and the cracked cement render plinth in bad condition. He reckons I need a builder to fix all of this before his firm can do their chemical injection stuff…Silly me. There I was hoping he might be able to spot all of this and organise fixing it for me…

Get a reliable builder to sort ALL of it. I wouldn’t have those damp “specialists” anywhere near the place. And those meters would find damp in the sahara! Scam.

Agreed, had one of those people trying to tell me I had rising damp in a first floor bathroom, waveing his meter around

The firm in questions always have vans out all over town, so they get plenty of business

When we bought our house then main survey said possible damp so we got one of these companies out. They said we needed same as you for whole of downstairs and concrete floor replacing! £15000! When building control came out to check an RSJ they agreed no damp here! Though we did get the sale price reduced by 15000 to cover it. So I suppose they kind of did us a favour!

Interesting. My mum is about to complete on a house in Dorking which has damp in a couple of places, namely adjoining walls between houses and on the front wall, the latter is obvious. Would a builder be able to sort all this for less? They’re suggesting stripping the plaster and then injecting the stuff on the joining walls to stop the damp there. Quite a costly process based on the two firms she has had quote.

Gotama – the problem with these lot is that many will jump straight to the conclusion that you need the chemical injection process. What they should do is fully investigate the issue and tell you what the cause of the damp is before suggesting any remedial work. There’s no point spending thousands on squirting stuff into a brick wall at low level if the real issue is a leaky pipe or bath above, or penetrating damp from dodgy pointing. Likewise, you need to know what you’re asking the builder to do if you go down that route.

Money no option, I reckon the safest course of action if you’re worried is to pay for an independent survey, rather than rely on a free survey from someone who coincidentally also specialises in exactly the solution you need.

Alternatively, do what Robfury did and use it as leverage for negotiating the sale price!

My guy this morning effectively just used his flashy gadget to tell me that parts of the wall are damper than others. But I can also tell you that based on the colour of the paint!

Further reading.

Rising Damp

http://www.heritage-house.org/pages/the-fraud-of-rising-damp.html

By all means a buyer could send a independent specialist around but as a seller, I wouldn’t let any damp proof specialist into my house if they worked for a company who sold damp proof injections/products. Shysters the lot.

I can’t believe I ever thought I was going to get anything useful out of taking a morning off…!