If you have rising damp in your home it makes sense to treat it using the best product available. Re-treatment can be expensive and disruptive.
At Countrywide Renovations we insist on Dryzone®:
Dryzone® has been tested against rising damp under more test conditions than any other product on the market including:
The ability to work in highly saturated walls is important because the saturation levels of walls suffering from rising damp can vary considerably, even within a single property. High levels of saturation are not uncommon – particularly at the base of the walls where damp-proofing creams are injected.
Damp-proofing creams need to be effective in mortars of high and low alkalinity. New mortar is highly alkaline (pH > 12), but the alkalinity of mortar falls over many years due to a process known as carbonation. For this reason 100 year old mortars are much less alkaline than new mortars (as low as pH 8).
Studies have shown that mortar porosity varies considerably between walls suffering from rising damp. Damp-proofing creams therefore need to be effective when used in mortars of high porosity and of low porosity.
Groundwater contains various salts. Some laboratory tests use a solution of common ground salts rather than pure water to create a better model of a real-life rising damp situation.
Rubble infill walls can present a difficult technical challenge for injected damp-proofing systems. No standard independent test methods are available for rubble infill walls. However, the Dryzone® in-house tests demonstrate that Dryzone® can be very effective when used in rubble infill walls due to its ability to migrate through a wide range of building materials.
Some active ingredients in damp-proofing creams have vapour pressures. For this reason they evaporate quickly when injected into warm mortars. Testing at high temperature is important in order to demonstrate that the active ingredients are able to cure and form a water-repellent zone before they can evaporate.
The chemical reactions that allow damp-proofing creams to cure and form a water-repellent zone occur much more slowly at low temperatures. Low temperature testing is therefore required to ensure that an effective damp-proof course can be formed within a reasonable timescale.
Mortars in old properties typically contain lime rather than cement whilst more modern mortars typically contain cement.