Damp proofingin Ealingfor period and converted homes

A typical finding in an Ealing villa is a tide mark on the ground-floor or lower-ground wall, with blown plaster and salt staining. Because so many of these houses were built with only a slate DPC, or none at all, genuine DPC failure is common, and where confirmed we inject a chemical DPC using an accredited Sovereign or Wykamol system and follow with salt-retardant replastering once the contaminated plaster has been stripped back.

But the survey has to look wider than the wall itself. Ground levels around these older villas have often been raised by paths, patios and flower beds over more than a century, and a solid wall with no cavity has no margin for that kind of bridging. Correcting the ground level can be as important as the injection itself.

A great deal of the damp we are asked to look at in Ealing is not rising damp at all, but the result of hard cement pointing and render applied to a soft, permeable Victorian brick wall that was designed to let moisture in and back out again through the mortar joints. Cement traps that moisture instead, and it comes through as damp patches, spalling brick faces and blown plaster on the inside.

Repointing in a lime-based mortar matched to the original, and removing hard cement render in favour of a breathable finish where appropriate, restores the wall's ability to manage moisture on its own terms rather than fighting it.

Ealing's larger villas frequently include a cellar or lower-ground room, and bringing one into everyday use, whether as a home office, gym or extra bedroom, requires proper structural waterproofing rather than a coat of waterproof paint. That generally means cementitious tanking bonded to sound masonry, or a cavity drain membrane system with perimeter drainage and a pumped or gravity discharge, depending on how the water is reaching the space.

The detailing at floor-to-wall junctions, around service penetrations and at any external steps or light wells is where these systems most often fail if rushed, so we specify and detail those points properly as part of an accredited installation.

The parapet walls and hidden valley gutters common on Ealing's larger terraces and villas are a frequent, and frequently overlooked, source of penetrating damp. A cracked parapet coping or a valley gutter blocked with leaves and moss can deliver water into the roof void and down through a party wall for a long time before it shows as a stain on a ceiling below.

Where a building has been converted into flats, we identify clearly whether a defect sits within a single flat's demise or is a shared, external repair, and put that in writing so a leaseholder can take it to their freeholder or managing agent without a fight over the diagnosis.

Moving out from the Broadway towards Hanwell, Perivale and Greenford, the housing shifts to 1920s and 1930s cavity semis and terraces, closer in construction to the rest of Middlesex. Here the more familiar interwar faults appear: mortar-bridged cavities, raised drives and patios bridging the DPC, and cracked pebbledash or render letting water through to the inner leaf.

We survey and treat both the older solid-wall stock and this later cavity housing, and the diagnosis differs accordingly rather than following a single template.