House damp walls investigation

[jonboy]

Good morning ,
Has anyone in the area had a damp survey and remedial work carried out and if so, do you recommend the tradesman .
Thanks for any info .

[jonboy]

Well...i had a survey done by a company from this area ( i will not name them here ) .
I received their quote to install a chemical damp proof course and a couple of sq mts of pointing .......£5100 ....yeh right . I am not sure that the old adage that " you get what you pay for " is always true .
About 25 years ago i installed a chemical damp proof course in a terraced house i sold . I hired the injection machine , bought 50 ltrs of chemical , a hammer drill , 3 masonry drill bits and 200 plastic plugs to fill the drill holes and all for about £200 , ok that was 25 years ago but still

I thought this time i would save my old knees, but at that price i think it will be knee pads and some paracetamol .

I have already bought the chemical injection cream that does not require a machine to inject it , just a mastic gun ... £ 85 including gun .
Another point with this injection cream is that the holes are drilled in the mortar joints and not into the brick as with the injection liquid , so should be much easier.

Stand by for an update in a couple of weeks time as to whether i have wasted £85 and a couple of days of my life or not .

[boatbuilder]

The best of luck with that, jonboy. I know I certainly wouldn't want to be doing that on my knees, they're bad enough these days - probably as a result of the last 10 years or so of my working life on boats.

£5,100? I wonder what hourly rate they were charging for the labour aspect of the job. £300? It does make you wonder.

[jonboy]

I have injected the damp proof course in the affected walls , quite easy really , as it is injected into the mortar joint and not into the brickwork itself , now i have to wait a few weeks for the chemical to "creep" along the mortar to make a continuous waterproof joint . After this wait i will then have to wait a few more weeks to see if it really has worked .
The recommended distance between drill holes is 120mm but i erred on the side of caution and drilled at 100mm so used a bit more chemical , but not half as hard or expensive as i first thought .

Will see in a few weeks if it was worth it . In any case i used the same injection cream as the damp proof company would have used .

[boatbuilder]

I'm glad to see you've got it done, jonboy. Fingers crossed it does the job but I'm sure it will. I hope to see a BIG smiley face on here in a few weeks.