Flood damage, or rising damp?

Rising Damp Ipswich arranges damp assessments across Ipswich and the western corridor.

Two different events, one appearance

Flood water saturates a wall through its full thickness in a matter of hours and leaves salts behind at whatever height it reached. Rising damp delivers a much smaller volume of water, continuously, from below, over years. Both leave salt in the plaster. Both blister paint. Years later, both can look like a horizontal band on a wall.

How to tell them apart

• Height. Flood damage sits at the flood height, which is frequently well above the metre or so rising damp reaches, and it is the same height on every wall in the room including internal ones.
• Change over time. Rising damp gets worse in a wet season and better in a dry one, every year. Flood salt has been the same since the water went down.
• Internal walls. A flood wets internal partitions. Rising damp affects walls that are in contact with the ground.

Why it changes the repair

A chemical damp course stops new water climbing. If the water stopped arriving in 2022, there is nothing for the barrier to stop, and installing one will not improve the wall by a millimetre. What that wall needs is the salt drawn out of it and the contaminated render replaced. Selling injection for flood residue is one of the more expensive mistakes made in this city.

Where in Ipswich this comes up

Most often on the Bremer flats and the low ground - Goodna, Basin Pocket, One Mile, North Ipswich, Riverview, and the lower parts of Coalfalls and Tivoli. On the ridges it is rarely the explanation.

See also salt and render removal.

Areas we cover

We take enquiries across the Ipswich local government area and the western corridor.