Traditional buildings weren’t designed to be “bone dry”; they were designed to manage moisture. Soft bricks, lime mortars, lime plasters, timber suspended floors and cross-flow ventilation all work together to take in a little moisture and let it back out again. When you understand that system, damp stops being a mystery and starts making sense.
At The Damp Specialist Company, we’re independent surveyors. We don’t sell or install treatments. Our job is to diagnose, explain, and specify, so owners can make informed decisions that protect the building’s fabric for the long term.
Traditional vs Modern: why the rules change
Traditional (pre-1919, vernacular)
- Breathable by design: soft, porous masonry + lime mortars/plasters allow evaporation.
- Timber suspended floors: need through-ventilation under the boards.
- Tolerance, not tightness: small amounts of moisture are expected and safely cycled.
Modern (post-war, cavity walls & membranes)
- Resistance by design: dense cement mortars, cavity barriers, plastic membranes.
- Air-tightness + insulation: moisture control leans on barriers and mechanical systems.
- Different failure modes: interstitial condensation, cold bridges, and service leaks dominate.
Why this matters: Applying modern, impermeable fixes (cement pointing, tanking, plastic masonry paints) to traditional, vapour-open fabric often traps moisture and creates the very “damp problem” it aims to solve.
Our stance: independent, conservation-minded, evidence-led
- We investigate, then explain. You’ll get plain-English findings about how your building breathes and where it’s being blocked.
- We align with the RICS–Historic England–PCA Joint Position Statement on investigating moisture in traditional buildings: diagnose causes, respect significance, and recommend proportionate, fabric-compatible actions.
- We never prescribe works we profit from. Recommendations are unbiased and prioritise maintenance, detailing and breathability over invasive interventions.
What a survey from us delivers
- Moisture narrative, not just meter readings
- We map patterns (capillary rise, rain ingress, surface condensation) and explain why they appear where they do.
- Fabric compatibility check We identify breathability breaks—cement pointing, acrylic/elastic paints, bitumen stripes, blocked air-bricks, raised ground levels, sealed floors over former voids.
- Risk to timber & sub-floors
- We assess ventilation routes, void climate, decay risk, and whether simple detailing/airflow changes could restore safe conditions.
- Salts & history
- Where appropriate, we use salt profiles (nitrates/chlorides/sulphates) and building history to separate long-standing moisture from recent leaks or lifestyle humidity.
- Proportionate, long-term recommendations
- You’ll receive a prioritised plan that typically focuses on:
- putting rainwater goods and junctions right;
- reinstating lime-based breathability where it’s been blocked;
- re-establishing sub-floor cross-flow;
- managing indoor moisture by source control and gentle ventilation.
Working with the building, not against it
Our goal isn’t to force a period house to behave like a new build. It’s to restore its original moisture pathways, so it can keep itself healthy with minimal intervention. That’s better for the fabric, more resilient over decades, and usually less invasive than “one-size-fits-all” damp treatments.