Real jobs from around Sydney
Rising Damp Case Studies
Learn From Real Houses
Every house is different, and most of what I know about rising damp comes from the jobs that did not fit the textbook. These case studies are real inspections and treatments from around Sydney: terraces, Federation houses, basements, strata garages and renovations.
Each one covers what I found, what was actually causing the problem, what I recommended, and the lesson worth taking from it.
Client names and street addresses are left out. Suburbs are kept so you can see the kinds of houses involved.
The Case Studies
- Waverley Federation Terrace: Two earlier injections had failed on this Waverley Federation terrace.
- Newtown Terrace: A Newtown terrace with rising damp painted over before sale.
- Mortdale: Five years after I treated this Mortdale house, the rear studio that used to flood had one small event.
- Cammeray: The injection worked, but the walls still sweated.
- Federation House: A Federation house where the original bitumen felt damp course had broken down.
- Victorian House: A Victorian brick wall sitting on a sandstone plinth.
- Annandale: An Annandale basement conversion and a bowing bedroom floor the builder blamed on damp.
- Petersham: A Petersham house where every original wall was covered in plasterboard or panelling.
- Paddington Terrace: A 100 year old Paddington terrace mid-renovation, where one wall had clearly been treated before and the rest had not.
- Campsie: A Campsie house rebuilt in the 1980s with concrete floors and a cavity wall.
- Ashfield: An Ashfield renovation where the footing excavations filled with water overnight.
- Watsons Bay: An old Watsons Bay terrace with a sandstone basement level on a sloping block.
- Bondi Strata Garage: A 1930s Bondi strata garage with a raised pathway along one wall and a leaking pipe above.
A lot of these jobs were called in as something else. A failed earlier treatment, a floor that was moving, walls that still looked wet after injection, damp hidden behind new linings. The common thread is that the visible symptom is rarely the whole story.
What comes up again and again:
- Damp courses bridged by raised paths, gardens and floors
- Salt left in old render after treatment
- Damp hidden behind fresh paint or wall linings
- Concrete floors pushing damp higher up the walls
- Below-ground rooms with more than one water source
- Earlier treatments put in the wrong place
If your house looks like one of these, get in touch and send a few photos. You can also read rising damp explained for the basics.