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Dealing With Rising Damp and Salt Attack: The Need To Get The Salt Out
Dealing With Rising Damp and Salt Attack: The Need To Get The Salt Out
Introduction
There is a need to rethink our approach to the treatment of rising damp and salt attack. We
have tended to see the deterioration at the base of walls as a problem related only to the
phenomenon of rising damp and so the focus of remedial treatments has been the
installation of damp-proof courses (DPCs). This is not surprising given the cool damp
climate of Britain from where most of our building traditions are derived.
However in this country we have hotter, drier climates and more saline soils leading to
greater rates of ‘transpiration’ through the walls and to the accumulation of soluble salts at
the evaporation zone in the masonry. The result is that we often have two problems to
address: rising damp and salt attack. When we install a DPC we may stop the damp rising,
but we won’t stop the salt attacking unless we remove it from our walls.
This paper assumes that we are dealing with buildings that either have no DPC or that have
early DPCs that are now ineffective.
More effective treatments for buildings lacking a functioning damp-proof course have
focussed on cutting off the water source through the installation of a new DPC. These
treatments have included both mechanical and chemical methods:
• undersetting — the technique of progressively rebuilding the base of the walls and the
incorporation of a DPC membrane;
• slot sawing — where a mortar joint is removed to allow insertion of a DPC membrane;
and
• chemical impregnation — where a DPC is formed by injecting or gravity feeding
chemicals into a series of drilled holes to produce a water-repellent zone.
Like our building tradition, these treatments originate from Europe (Ashurst & Ashurst,
1988; Oliver, 1997; Richardson, 2001). There the climate is cooler and wetter than ours and so
the rate of transpiration of moisture through walls is lower, though the walls themselves
may be wetter. The damper climate also leads to the downward flushing of soluble salts.
Consequently, remedial treatments are principally aimed at dealing with dampness in walls,
at preventing soil moisture from rising through porous masonry. These are the treatments
that we have inherited and have adopted as our standard practice.
To effectively deal with the problem we need to deal with both rising damp and salt attack.
This may seem obvious, yet because of our building tradition we have tended to focus on the
damp and until recently, largely ignored the salt. We have wrongly assumed that by cutting
off the rising damp, we would stop the damage caused by the salts.
This is not so, for though cut off from soil moisture, salts can still cycle in and out of solution
due to changes in atmospheric humidity. The hygroscopic nature of the salts attracts water
from humid atmospheres leading to their solution and to an apparently dry wall becoming
suddenly damp. During the next dry period the salts recrystallise causing ongoing damage
to the masonry. While the rate of decay may be slower than before, it will continue while
salts remain. And so we need to remove the salts as well as dealing with the rising damp.
Undersetting
Though expensive, this technique has the advantage of combining the removal of salt-
affected masonry with the insertion of a new DPC. From a heritage point of view, a
disadvantage of this technique is the loss of original material, the aim of conservation often
being retention of as much original fabric as possible (Australia ICOMOS, 1999).
Washing, sponging
Walls are wetted in a controlled way with low volume water sprays or misting devices, then
allowed to dry for a period so that salts are drawn to the surface from where they can be
either flushed with water or damp sponged from the wall. This technique has been used on
major buildings in Sydney without great success.
Absorbent poultices
A wet paste of absorbent material is applied to the wall surface and allowed to dry. The
contained water soaks into the masonry, dissolves the salts and then dries back out through
the poultice, bringing the salts with it and leaving them in the absorbent material. A
commercial product “Cocoon”, marketed for this purpose, is an adaptation of a filtering
medium and contains paper pulp and diatomaceous earth. Experience suggests that two or
three cycles of poulticing may be necessary to remove high salt concentrations.
Consider the example of a 100 year old house. It is well built, with brick walls and lime
mortar, and sits up on a well drained block with no ponding of surface water against the
house. Yet the lime mortar of the lower 5–10 courses of brickwork is eroding and in places
the loss is up to 50 mm from the wall face. The bricks are in reasonable condition, showing
only the first signs of deterioration. There is no damp-proof course and not a lot of dampness
in the walls. On the inside the plasterwork is in good condition with only a few areas of
blistering beneath paint coatings. It is tempting to think that as the house has lasted 100
years, the decay will not be much worse after another 20 or 30 years. Postponing action on
this basis would be wrong, as the following graph shows.
Rate of salt attack decay. While this a notional example, it illustrates how it
would be wrong to think that because decay has taken 100 years to get to the
present state (as shown by the dot on the graph), there is no urgency about
taking remedial action. In this case decay would be nearly three times worse
in only ten more years.
This is a situation where although there is not a lot of salt in the soils, it is very effectively
drawn into the walls and concentrated by the strong evaporative conditions of hot dry
summers. In a case like this where the dampness alone is not causing problems (the interiors
are not unhealthily damp) inserting a remedial DPC may be unnecessary. Instead, attention
should be focussed on removing the salts from the lower parts of the walls and repairing the
mortar joints. In the simplest method described below, the two processes are combined.
Repairing mortar joints (known as repointing) should be done in a mortar that will act
sacrificially like the plasters and renders mentioned before. Unlike the all too common
approach of impervious, hard cement, it should be made of lime and sand and, ideally, there
should be some porous aggregates such as crushed limestone replacing some of the sand in a
mix of something like 1:3 to 1:5 lime:sand. Stronger mixes should be used on the weather
side of the house, while weaker mixes might be used on sheltered sides.
This sacrificial mortar will last for a variable period depending on how much salt remains in
the walls (in the remaining mortar and in the adjacent bricks) and on how well the
repointing has been carried out. If there is substantial salt remaining in the bricks this will
migrate into the new mortar and cause it to decay in not many years. A second round of
repointing may be necessary after 5-10 years, but this should substantially reduce the salt
burden in the walls. In doing so, it effectively resets the position on the graph above back to
a point where there’s little decay.
We must be clear that this treatment does not cure the damp — instead it is a maintenance
approach of managing the damp and preventing it from getting worse. Like any
maintenance it will require periodic renewal.
Conclusion
I contend that there are many cases such as the example described where it is more
important to remove salt from the walls than it is to insert a new DPC. We need to need to
rethink our approach to the treatment of salt attack and rising damp. The right answer will
be as much about salt as it is about damp.
Ashurst, J. & Ashurst, N. 1988. Practical building conservation. English Heritage technical
handbooks, Volume 2: Brick, terracotta and earth. Gower Technical Press, Aldershot, Hants,
UK. ISBN 0-291-39746-8.
Australia ICOMOS. 1999. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of
Cultural Significance, 1999. Australia ICOMOS Inc., Melbourne.
Oliver, A.C. 1997. Dampness in buildings. 2nd edn, revised by J. Douglas and J.S. Stirling,
Blackwell Science, Oxford. ISBN 0-632-04085-8.
Richardson, Barry. 2001. Defects and deterioration in buildings: a practical guide to the science of
material failure. 2nd edn, Taylor & Francis, London. ISBN 041925210X.
Young, David. 1995. Rising damp and salt attack. South Australia, Department of
Environment and Natural Resources, and the City of Adelaide, Heritage Conservation: 3.8. ISSN
1035-5138.