Property Maintenance in Reigate (RH2)
Damp in an older Reigate house is easy to misread and expensive to get wrong. Several quite different causes all produce a similar mark on a wall, and the treatment for one is useless against another.
Three different problems that look the same
Water coming in from outside, water rising from the ground, and water already in the room condensing on a cold surface will all leave a damp patch and blown plaster.
They need entirely different work. Penetrating damp is a fabric problem — a failed gutter, an open joint, a cracked render panel, a bridged cavity — and it is fixed outside. Rising damp is genuinely uncommon, and where it is happening it is usually because a path, patio or flowerbed has been built up above the damp course. Condensation is a heating and ventilation problem, and no amount of replastering will touch it. This matters because injecting a wall and replastering it addresses only one of the three, and on the other two it is wasted money.
How to tell which one you have
The clues are in the pattern and the timing rather than in a meter reading. A patch that darkens within a day of heavy rain and dries out afterwards is coming in from outside, and the place to look is the elevation above it. A tide mark at low level that is there all year, with salts showing in the plaster, points to ground moisture and to what has been built up outside the wall. Mould in corners, behind furniture and around windows, worse in winter and worse in the rooms used most, is condensation. Telling them apart takes a proper look at the whole building rather than the one wall, and it is worth an hour on site before anybody quotes for treatment. The fabric repairs that follow — brickwork, plastering, joinery, groundworks — are our own team's. If the answer turns out to be heating, ventilation or electrics, that is a specialist trade, and we bring it in and run it rather than handing you a phone number. We survey it, tell you which of the three it is, and price the work that actually addresses it.
Repairs on period and conservation-street property
Reigate's Victorian and period housing is solid-walled, and repairs on those walls should let them behave the way they were built to.
That means breathable finishes rather than sealed ones, pointing in a mix softer than the brick, and plaster that suits the wall behind it. On listed properties and in the conservation streets there is a further consideration: consent can be needed even for work that seems routine, and like-for-like repair is usually both the right answer and the acceptable one.
More in Reigate
Everything we do in Reigate is on the Reigate area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the building maintenance page.
Common questions
Q.01Someone has quoted to inject my walls. Should I?
Only if what you actually have is rising damp, which is genuinely uncommon. Establish the cause first — if water is coming in through the wall from outside, or condensing on it from inside, injection changes nothing.
Q.02The damp came back after replastering. Why?
Because replastering treats the symptom. If the cause outside has not been dealt with, the wall wets up again and the new plaster fails exactly as the old one did, usually within a couple of winters.
Q.03Can you look at damp in a listed Reigate property?
Yes, and it needs a careful approach. Old buildings manage moisture by letting it move through and evaporate, so the repair has to be breathable, and we check what consents apply before any work starts.
Q.04How do I get someone out to look at it?
Ring 01883 337 700. We come out from Godstone, look at the whole building rather than at the stain, and give you a written price for the work that will actually fix it.
Thinking about building maintenance in Reigate?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.