How to stop rising damp, easy DIY solution 

Had damp and mouldy smell in my launge for years. After a lot of replacing plaster and keeping a window open all through winter months, I decided to rip up the floor boards. My DPC was old-fashioned slates. Broken and missing motar from joints and some of the slates had deteriorated. Thorough cleaning, then replaced broken and deteriorated slates. Repointed, then cleared a whole lot of damp dirt from underneath the suspended flooring. Let the area dry out for approx 1 month. Yeah, it was a long, hard, and messy job, but it was worth it. Replastered wall. Replaced damp skirting and floorboards. Sanded and varnished wooden floor. Damp walls and smell gone. Oh, I also had to dig up the concrete paving under the windows outside as it was higher than the airbricks. I replaced the rotten makeshift airbricks covering with clay airbricks. My launge has remained damp free and smells great for over 3yrs now. And i'm a woman in her 50s! I learnt almost all I know from these DIY videos. My thing is, have a go. You never know what you can achieve. The best thing is, you save yourself a fortune.

Damp will come through that plaster I promise you, there is no special coating to stop the damp, the coating will just peel and bubble off. In an old house (mine is 250 years old), the only sure way is to take out a section of the wall at floor level say 4 bricks length at time at ground level either one brick or two bricks thick, then with the hole clearance available dig out as much below ground which was under the bricks you have taken out, a breaker drill will do the job beautifully especially if you can break up the adjacent floor say 3 inches out and that will enable you to sideways dig out the old damp foundation rubble causing the rising damp. Having dug out your new foundation trench you have , now you have to put in there what you would use as if was a new house you were building, ie impervious materials, quality concrete, DPC and blue clay impervious bricks. This might sound like hard work but it's worth it. The best thing is that the layer you put in say 2 bricks high when dried off, will be totally dry and the damp brickwork above it will dry out at about an inch or 2 a month, even quicker if you want to use a fan on the wall continuously. A 4 brick section of the wall taken out at a time and it won't take long and in the end you know it's been done right and any plastering done above that new brickwork you know it will be good and dry.

My guess would be gypsum plaster sealing-in the moisture causing the build-up of the wet. Solution: Remove all the gypsum plaster and replace with an appropriate BREATHABLE plaster and problem solved. It's amazing that people do things and are completely oblivious to what is actually going on around them.

Has it dealt with the symptoms, what about the cause. The damp will still be there behind it. I spoke with someone who did this and damp reappeared further up 4 or 5 years later. Hope it works for you.

Dude, fantastic video. I had 2 professionals cone and do my external wall, took them 3 days and the damp came back. Gonna send them your link.

I had a cold wall in my wardrobe. Love their products used the damp proof paste and heat reflective wallpaper.

Brilliant job!

Well explained and demonstrated, thanks. Made things a lot clearer.

Nice job, can tell you take pride In your work, tidy.

Absolutely brilliant video. Excellent explanation all thro.

Excellent product. Explained well

Trying the dryzone rods tomorrow. How amazing is this technology?

Cool video la, finished product looks boss

This is the first video of yours that I've seen and honestly I think it immediately became my favorite DIY video. You took the mistery out of a fairly intransigent ubiquitous problem and explained everything perfectly. A fantastically helpful video, well done mate! Thanks very much.

great video mate 🤙

Grand job that m8! 👌

Great video!! thanks

Thank you!

How many bags of their plaster did you need to do the size you did? I am doing exactly the same width but up to 1.8m, so plan to buy double the amount you used. Thank you for this video and for your answer in advance!

can you use this method with breeze blocks

Cracking job mate...your trowel skills are very good

Thanks!

Great job, be proud of your work 👍

Hi good evening can you tell me what are this white thing in the wall is the candles

amazing

Did you do the same on the other side of the wall?

Ive been told the best way to deal with chimney salts is to knock all the render off, then spray it with TG500 and use Sika 1 in the mix. Is this right for chimney salts?

very impressive plastering how much experience you have with that? might have to hire.a plasterer to do that part, but would love to try myself ha

I have this kind of problem, how much would you be liking at someone to do this for you? I’ve seen the dry rods for like 10 are about £25. Before Labour and other materials

Great job and well explained thank you 😅

Brickwork looked bone dusty dry!? Yet surface of gysum plaster appeared damp. Doesn't seem like the problem was from behind the plaster. Was a damp survey done first? Looks like you've just hidden the real problem for a few years. Hope the floor scrubbed up well after too. A few more dust sheets down would have saved you hours of cleaning up.

plug socket conveniently located away from the rising damp area lol. nice.

👍👍👍Thanks

Am Michael from Ghana where can I get the product some

Can you do it from the outside if the wall has an external face

Thanks for the detailed installation I am going to use the product next few days 👍

Amazing this mate, wanted to ask does the other side need plastering as it’s an internal wall?

I’ve got an 1850s house and an old skirting board has rotted on an internal wall. I’ve not taken it off yet, but it has to be rising damp. Have watched loads of your other videos for brilliant advice and going to give this a whirl!

very good video ! if you was plasterboarding after the dryzone rods what salt neutraliser would you use on the wall ? thankyou

Really helpful video, thankyou! And you did a great job on that plastering!

Wish they did similar products for garages. I have a huge problem with water seeping through an underground wall. You're a brave man to take on plastering as a non professional. The tiniest imperfections are magnified once you get silk paint on there.

whats rthe purpose of the rods >?

Recently had a quote for £1056 to do less than a meter of rising damp. No way i'm paying that. Thank you so much for this video. I think i will now do it myself 👌

So what function do the rods serve? Do they wick the damp?

What about external side of wall?

Great stuff. Did you manage find out teh cause of the rsing damp? If so, how did you fix it so it doesnt occure again?

If we have on the first floor from the ground mould and the same wall in the next room on the second floor from the bottom. So how to work on the second floor? Where does the water go, if we do Similar ways? Does water not go to the first floor from the top? how to fix that wall on the first and second floor?

Nooice!

Is it possible to reuse the dryrod offcuts (for example put two in together)?

Thanks Mate - exactly what I was looking for. Saved me tons of time. Cheers.

Can you send me the link to buy all the materials for this job please. Many thanks

This is very helpful. Thank you 🙏🏼

What a fantastic video. Explanations' and methods demonstrated clearly. Well done and thank you, this has greatly helped with my next DIY project.

You did a nice job. Be interesting to find out why that wall was getting damp, must be some water source underneath there.

Only needed lime plaster and breathable paint

I have a terrace house, at what height does tbis need to be injected, as i have solid oak wood nailed to the floor.

How much that cost to fix this labour and material

If you use the rods externally, what do you need to do to cover them up?

All you had to do was chop out the bonding coat and board using their express system. Bonding coat is not suitable for salt affected areas.

This is something I’m going to have to do in the near future, you made that look so easy

Good video, but one thing I don’t get is what is the purpose of the rods? I don’t get it

Could you just dot and dab wall instead of plastering ?

have someone tried ? does it help for the water not to come anymore from the floor ?

Is the skirting board new? If not why not remove the skirting board first to see what is happening behind the skirting board first?

It could be bridged somewhere

More silliness

I think the 1st coat of plaster should be as instructions on bag-- because it needs to get in all the cracks and crevasses to seal the brickwork better-- then yes make it slightly thicker for 2nd coat . good job well done and thanks for sharing.

How

How many DIY’ers can actually apply render and can he be 100% certain that the mortar joint is totally sealed with the cream so where is the guarantee going to come from.

And surprise surprise the brickwork seems bone dry..

Can’t beat old school sand and cement if done correctly…this is basically a advertisement campaign…

doesn't this just push the moisture somewhere else. you make a barrier to where it is coming through right now, but who knows where that moisture is going instead. I can't help but see this as a temporary thing. Usually pushing the problem down the road to the next owner of the house (first hand experience of this happening right now)

Just two points. 1. If you have to remove the plaster back to brick on a solid 9” wall anyway. Don’t waste money on an injection system, just get it plastered in lime. NHL3.5 will do the job, and dry in a similar tins to gypsum (which is trapping your moisture inside the bricks. 2. Rising damp doesn’t exist. Water travels down, either your ground level outside is too high (dig it out and lower it), idd red your gutter is overflowing.

Always looks easy then when you start the first step, taking off the skirting, on a 30s planked floor house takes the jam right out of your doughnut. Nails rusted to the brick, skirting ends up as kinling and you can't buy that Suze and type anywhere on the planet so the whole room needs reskirted and the water table is so high under the floor that there's an inch of standing water. Let's get some real world problems. As you say anyone could fix that one.

Didnt really get what those plastic /rubber tubes were all about?

How about this: " After damp-course installation, it is very important that the treated walls are left to dry for a period of several months before any re-plastering / re-rendering, painting.... Generally, it may take about a minimum 3 months of drying before any re-plastering/re-rendering can be done. Very salty walls should be left to dry for a minimum 6 months..."

My guess is the rad on the lefthand side😂

And yet you’ve done a hell of a lot better job at plastering than our council hired of cowboy contractors 🤦‍♀️😂 they skimmed our kitchen and bathroom walls terrible and the plaster may aswell be non existent 🤦‍♀️

It’s a decent system but Sika also do an impregnating compound the appropriate holes are filled with the use of an ordinary caulking gun. A little bit of advice when using SBR as a bonding/sealing coat, damp the substrate firstly. The SBR is more easily absorbed into the substrate. Unfortunately gypsum is very water soluble, very. Better to use a lime based render as it’s also breathable.

doing a job and not protecting the wooden floor , wtf

Non of this is needed!!! You said it’s a solid wall…..you have modern materials that do but allow moisture to escape! What you have is condensation which is exactly what they call rising damp ……it doesn’t exist! If you had taken the plaster off and let it dry out that’s it plus a lime plaster afterwards No idea if you have cement render on outside but if you do this is further more your issue as cement and gypsum trap moisture!

This is not DIY

Nope.

This sorry excuse for a human is selling you snake oil! He does not have a clue about damp! AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Total rubbish.!! The damp is obviously being caused by the gypsum plaster layer that has been placed over the old original lime plaster. The lime allows moisture to breath out of the wall - the gypsum was locking it in. All that is needed here is for the gypsum layer to be removed or all taken down and the lime reinstated. Everything you did here is utterly pointless and has made the situation much worse. That wall will be saturated behind all that waterproofing in a few years.

Why is the damp in just one small area? What investigation was done? What actual cure did you achieve? You appear to have just covered it over and not got rid of the root cause. Smoke and mirrors.