Damp Specialists

Our customer had a nicely appointed turn of the century semi detached house in Oxfordshire which had been modernised over the years in more or less the way people normally do.

The old sash windows had been replaced, a new bathroom and kitchen had been installed with layout changes and guttering had been repaired. Full gas central heating had been installed with a decent flow rate shower.

Ostensibly the house looked nice, and it was nice but it was typically running at a humidity of ~73% and as a result of that, there was a substantial problem with black mould.

There was also a “rising damp problem”.

I surveyed the property and although it was built prior to building regulations regarding ventilation, they had not been considered in the context of the upgrades, and the outside ground levels and drainage systems from the Victorian era had been badly installed way back then and weren’t working properly / in the way you’d want them to work now.

The drainage problems meant that water from the roof, kitchen sink outlet, and bathroom were being improperly routed, the original Victorian fittings had cracked and the water was discharging into the the side wall of the house above the damp proof course and this was soaking the whole wall.

The remedy for this was to excavate along the side of the house and dispose of the old Victorian fittings and install new fittings back to a part of the original drain which was undamaged. This has allowed all of the waste water to get away from the side of the house properly.

Then looking at the other problems in the house, new windows had been fitted which didn’t have the proper ventilation, there was no extraction in either the kitchen or the bathroom and the “inter room” air movement was compromised. Because this had gone on for so long the structure of the house was carrying a lot of water.

The options really were to replace all of the windows and patio doors with compliant ones, or an MVHR system. Thinking through the options, even replacing all the windows wouldn’t actually “force” air through the property in the structured and measured manner that is achieved my an MVHR installation. It was likely that even if this was done, the humidity levels wouldn’t drop fast enough, and if they did the heating bills associated with the increased airflow would be huge.

MVHR “forces” air movement in a way that traditional background ventilation doesn’t.

Upon startup the system registered a humidity of 73%. 

Within 18 hours of operation the system was showing a humidity of 67% and after 5 days the humidity had been reduced to 55%.

The project “flipped the script” on the mould by creating an environment in which it could not grow because the conditions weren’t right for it. Starving it of the humidity levels it needs, is staving it of water and everything dies off if you do that. The remnants need cleaning, but it’s gone from the whole house.

The UBBINK offering is our system of choice. The end to end specification and design mean that the system is highly efficient and does not suffer from the problems that are almost “designed in” to other systems if they are not an end to end solution. 

If you have a difficult damp problem feel free to contact Byfield Damp Solutions.