Damp in a Perth wall can be a working damp course that has been buried, not a failed one.
Talk it throughRising Damp Perth assesses and treats damp across the Perth metropolitan area.
Every path, driveway, garden bed and concrete apron poured against a wall raises the outside level a little. Do it enough times over enough decades and the original damp course ends up buried, with wet ground sitting above it. The damp course is then bridged and irrelevant, and no new one will help until the level is dealt with. This is the cheapest version of the problem to fix and the most expensive to misdiagnose, because an injected course installed under a bridged wall solves nothing.
Can a path really cause rising damp? It can bridge a damp course that was working perfectly well. If the outside level sits above the course, wet ground is in contact with masonry above the barrier and the barrier is irrelevant. Lowering the level is sometimes the whole fix.
A hard cement render over old masonry is one of the surest ways to turn a slow damp problem into a fast one. The wall was built to breathe through its face; the render stops it, so the moisture climbs higher looking for somewhere to leave. From outside the render can look perfectly sound while the wall behind it is not. Anyone quoting to render over a damp wall without saying what is under the existing coat is quoting for the symptom.
Should I re-render over the damp? Not before someone establishes what is already under the existing coat. A hard render over old masonry can be the cause rather than the cure, and rendering again seals the same problem in for another decade.
Perth's sand drains fast, which hides drainage faults until winter. A downpipe discharging at the base of a wall, or a reticulation line running along it, keeps the ground charged through the wet months.
The order matters. Injecting a damp course into a wall whose real problem is a paved garden bed is money spent on the wrong thing, which is why the assessment comes first and the quote comes after.
Moisture meter readings at height intervals up the wall, an external check of ground levels, paving and reticulation, and a look at what coatings are already on the wall.
Rising damp, lateral damp through a retaining or buried wall, a plumbing or reticulation leak, condensation, or bore-water staining. They look alike and cost very differently.
If paving has buried the damp course or a garden bed sits against the wall, that is corrected before any chemical course is considered. Injecting around a bridge does nothing.
A chemical course injected into the mortar line, sized to the wall material.
Contaminated render removed and replaced with a salt-retarding, breathable system. Skipping this is why treated walls come back.
A treated wall dries over months, not days. Anyone promising a finished wall in a fortnight is telling you what you want to hear.
| Work | Indicative range | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Chemical damp-proof course, per metre | $180 - $340 | Injected into the mortar course. Limestone generally sits at the upper end because it takes more material to achieve a continuous barrier. |
| Drainage and ground-level correction | $900 - $6,000 | Lowering paving, cutting back garden beds, adding a drain. Where the cause is bridging rather than a failed damp course, this is the fix. |
Every range, and how the figures were set, is on the cost page. A fixed price follows the assessment.
We carry out assessments across the Perth metropolitan area, including:
Rising Damp Perth