Damp Proofing And What They Do Not Tell You About Living By The Sea
I’vealways wished to live in a beach house and sip cocktails at sundown while viewing dolphins playing in the sea and jumping over the waves silhouetted by the radiant setting sun. So far, so perfect and thoroughly airbrushed, and also a fantasy I never imagined would be realised. Just a few years later I found myself owning a lovely little seaside bungalow, thanks to great uncle Harry recalling me in his will. The place appeared fantastic when I first bought it and I could see the previous owner had taken good care of this sweet home but little did I realize that sultry environments are tough on dwellings, and the sea air corrodes such as you won’t think! This downside is obviously never ever referred to in glossy property publications extolling the virtues of living around the coast.
Now, I’m no specialist on damp, having moved from a high-altitude inland city, but I noticed salty spots appearing on the outside wall surfaces of my home in the second summer season after I moved in. The wallpaper in the lounge also began peeling from the wall for no specific reason and there was plenty of black mildew behind it. It poured with rain that summer but I had been mindful to close the windows anytime I saw bad weather coming therefore i couldn’t work out where the moistness was originating from. So I contacted a specialized waterproofing contractor, and I suggest that you need to do the same if you happen to notice unusual things happening to your walls. Waterproofing contractors are specialists at detecting the cause of peculiar phenomena such as a rash of bubbles in your paintwork and use special damp proofing strategies to remedy damp.
The specialist who looked at my walls said that quantities of salts commonly found in the ground encircling the house foundations had entered the walls by way of a kind of capillary action and that it was what was creating the stains on the walls and disentegrating wallpaper. He told me that these salts absorb moisture from the air and that seaside homes, particularly, are afflicted by damp problems because of the high humidity. He also remarked that my house was somewhat aged and might not have received adequate damp proofing, if it had even been damp proofed in any way.
Damp proofing in the foundations is generally done whenever a house is built, that much I knew, so i wondered how it might be carried out on an existing house. The contractor stated that they’d drill holes in the wall and fill them with a substance that would go into the enveloping wall and make a barrier against the moisture. Only once the source of the damp was addressed would I be able to clean and repaper or paint the walls that had been affected. This I would carry out myself but I realized without a doubt that there was no chance I would have the ability to do the actual damp proofing which is why I told the waterproofing contractor to go ahead and get the job done – some things would be better left to the experts.
For more information about damp proofing visit the website http://www.waterproofingcontractor.co.za
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