A dry house increases our living and living comfort. Damp houses are not only unpleasant to live in, they are also the cause of many health problems. What exactly is rising damp, and what are the main causes of this damp problem, which is by no means limited to older homes? How can we stop rising damp and permanently control it, so that our persistent and unhealthy damp problems in our home are a thing of the past?
Health issues
With the winter period behind us, it is high time to thoroughly check our house for rising damp. The problem of damp houses should certainly not be underestimated. Many homes are struggling with it. It is also striking how many recently built homes are confronted with moisture problems. Damp homes first of all reduce living and living comfort. But there is much more. In many cases they are also the cause of both physical and psychological health problems. All kinds of respiratory infections and skin disorders are caused in damp homes. In some cases they are even the cause of social exclusion, responsible for many depressions. Not surprising, because moisture problems make our home inferior. The moisture problem in our homes is therefore important enough to stop on time and definitively. What are the various causes of these moisture problems, and how can we permanently stop the moisture in our home?
Causes of rising damp
Walls that are in direct contact with the moist surface suck the water upwards like a sponge, with all the adverse consequences that entails. This physical phenomenon is called capillarity in professional jargon. The height to which the moisture rises depends of course on several factors. The severity of the humidity level in our home is largely influenced by the pore structure of the building materials used, the wall thickness involved, the evaporation and the presence of salts. In most problem homes, rising damp reaches a height of about 120 centimeters. This height of groundwater rise is limited in highly ventilated homes, or when our groundwater contains lower concentrations of salts. All kinds of home, garden and kitchen remedies to stop the rising damp, such as applying several layers of silver paper, cement plasters or bituminous layers, in most cases do more harm than good. After all, they slow down evaporation, so that the moisture will rise even higher.
Recognize by mold
Rising damp can first of all be recognized by mold and wet spots on the underside of our walls. Rising damp is by no means exclusively a problem for old houses. For some time, new-build homes have been protected against moisture with a moisture-resistant foil, but that was certainly not always the case in the past. When making the diagnosis, moisture in the masonry of our home is easily detected, because it occurs in almost all walls in contact with the substrate. The presence of, for example, cement plaster, fiber cement panels or paneling at the bottom of walls often betrays the presence of rising damp.
Reduced heat insulation
The consequences of rising damp are, for example, loose wallpaper, crumbling wall plaster, salt efflorescence, severe discolouration of painted surfaces, corrosion of any metals and a strong reduction of the heat insulation in our home. Because many mineral salts are naturally present in both the subsoil and the building materials used and these, along with the rising moisture, pull into our walls and crystallize upon evaporation, serious additional damage can occur to both the interior and the interior. exterior finish of our home.
Inject damp walls
Determining moisture in our home is of course very important. More importantly, what can we do about this important problem? In most cases we can stop the rising damp in our home by injecting the affected walls with a specially designed gel. Due to the nature of the preparatory work, this is a time-consuming job. Before we can start injecting our damp walls, we have to thoroughly remove the plaster that has been damaged by the moisture. Once the plaster has been removed to the bare wall, we make holes in the wall, along which we insert the moisture-resistant product into the wall. We must make sure that this product can penetrate as deeply as possible into the walls, so that the moisture does not have a chance to return.
Let walls dry out thoroughly
In order to protect our home against rising damp as efficiently as possible, we let the treated walls dry out thoroughly. Only when the walls have completely dried out, which can take several months, can a new plaster be applied.
Moisture control at the start of renovation work
If we are in need of a thorough renovation of our home, we prefer to carry out a moisture-resistant treatment of our walls at the start of the planned renovation work. After all, we should certainly take into account the very long drying time of the treated walls. This drying time obviously depends on various factors, such as the thickness of the walls to be treated, the type of building material and the weather conditions.