Ipswich is the oldest provincial city in Queensland, which means a share of its masonry predates the damp proof course entirely.
Talk it throughRising Damp Ipswich arranges damp assessments across Ipswich and the western corridor.
A damp proof course is a horizontal barrier built into a wall a couple of courses above the ground, to stop water in the soil climbing into the masonry above it. It became normal practice in Australian building through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and it was not retrofitted to anything already standing.
So a solid brick or stone building put up in Ipswich in the 1870s or 1880s very often has nothing in it. It has coped for a century and a half because it was built to breathe - lime mortar, permeable render, no sealed finishes - and the water that came up left again through the face of the wall.
Almost always because something changed outside or on the surface. Ground levels rise with each round of paving. Cement render replaces lime. Acrylic paint goes over brick that used to breathe. Each of those is a reasonable decision on its own, and together they turn a wall that was managing into a wall that is failing.
A chemical damp proof course can be injected into the mortar bed of a wall that never had one. On a thick solid wall that is a bigger job than on a cavity wall, because there is more masonry to saturate with the barrier. The other half of the work - removing salt-contaminated render and letting the wall dry - is usually larger still.
It is also worth saying plainly that not every old wall needs treating. A hundred-year-old wall with a slight seasonal tide mark and no salt damage is doing what it was designed to do.
Next: what happens when a damp course exists but has failed.
We take enquiries across the Ipswich local government area and the western corridor.
Rising Damp Ipswich