Damp proofing in Cyprus.Compare several quotes at once.

A sector where the diagnosis comes with a quotation

In most trades, the person who tells a client what is wrong is not the person who profits from the answer. A structural question goes to an engineer, who is paid for the opinion and does not build the solution.

Damp proofing is not organised that way. The free survey is the sector's standard route to work, and the firm attending forms the diagnosis, writes the report and quotes for the remedy in the same visit. Nothing about this is improper — it is how the market functions, and many firms operating in it are careful — but it does mean that the document a homeowner receives is simultaneously an assessment and a sales proposal, and it should be read as both.

The practical response is proportionate rather than suspicious. For a small localised job, a contractor's survey is a reasonable basis to act on. For an expensive remedy across a whole building, an independent assessment paid for by the client is worth its fee, because it removes the incentive question from the one document everything else depends on.

What the sector consists of

Injected damp course firms. Businesses built around a specific treatment for one specific cause, usually combined with replastering the treated walls. The replastering is frequently the larger part of the contract.

Tanking and structural waterproofing specialists. Working on basements, retaining walls, lift pits and anywhere water arrives under pressure from the outside. This is a technically distinct discipline from surface damp work.

Rendering and facade contractors. Where the cause is water entering through an external wall — failed render, an unsealed junction, poor detailing at a window — the remedy is external repair, and the trade is rendering.

Roofers and plumbers. A substantial share of what is reported as damp is a leak, and the remedy sits with the trade that owns the leaking element rather than with a damp specialist at all.

Building surveyors and engineers. Paid for assessment, not for treatment. Smaller in number, and the only part of the sector with no stake in which remedy is chosen.

A client who has decided they have "damp" and calls a damp proofing firm has already narrowed the field to one of these five. That narrowing happens before any evidence has been considered.

What a survey should actually contain

A report worth acting on shows its working. Four elements distinguish one that does.

The readings, and the instrument. What was measured, at what heights and locations, and with what. Surface meters respond to conductivity rather than directly to water, and salt in masonry conducts — which matters a great deal in a coastal environment, because a high reading on a salt-contaminated wall is not by itself evidence of water.

What was eliminated. Plumbing above and behind the affected area, external detailing, drainage, roof and any condensation pattern. A cause proposed without alternatives ruled out is a preference rather than a conclusion.

The reasoning. How the evidence leads to the stated cause. This is the part most often absent, and its absence is the single most useful thing to notice in a report.

A remedy matched to that cause, with the making good and the drying period stated rather than implied.

A report meeting those four can be taken to a second contractor for pricing on a like-for-like basis, which is the other reason to insist on it.

Guarantees, and what they depend on

Long guarantees are a feature of this sector's marketing, and their value rests on details that are rarely discussed at the point of sale.

Who stands behind it. A contractor's own guarantee depends on that business continuing to exist. An insurance-backed guarantee is underwritten by a third party and survives the contractor. Over the periods these documents typically name, the difference is substantial.

What it covers. Frequently the treatment only — reapplying a product to the same wall — rather than the consequences of it having failed, which is where the real cost sits.

What voids it. Conditions about maintenance, about subsequent alterations, and in some cases about the very external repairs the building actually needed.

Whether it transfers. On a property that may be sold, a guarantee that does not pass to a new owner is worth less than one that does.

The useful step is to ask for the guarantee document before comparing prices, rather than after choosing. A firm that provides it readily has answered the question; one that describes it only in conversation has also answered it.

How the work is priced

Injected treatments are quoted by the linear metre of wall treated. Tanking and replastering are quoted by the square metre. On most contracts of this type the replastering, the making good and the redecoration together exceed the treatment itself, which is worth knowing when comparing a quotation that includes them with one that does not.

Where the actual cause is a leak, a failed external detail or a drainage problem, the work is priced as roofing, plumbing, rendering or groundworks. It frequently costs less than a damp proofing contract and, where the diagnosis is right, it is the only one of the two that stops the problem.

Two items belong in any quotation and are routinely absent. The first is the drying period — a treated wall holds moisture for a long time, and nothing can be finished over it until it has gone. The second is what happens if the cause turns out to be something else, which is the question a fixed-price remedy for a misdiagnosed problem does not answer.

The levels below are drawn from published sources rather than from quotations gathered here, and they indicate a general band. Which remedy the building actually needs is what places a job within it.

Assessing a contractor

• Whether they will diagnose before quoting, and whether the report shows its reasoning.
• Business registration and liability insurance, since there is no licence to check.
• The guarantee arrangement, in a document, with the underwriter named if it is insurance-backed.
• Comparable work still standing after several years, because this is a trade where failure is slow and a fresh finish proves nothing.
• Willingness to say the cause is not theirs to fix. A damp specialist who identifies a plumbing leak and says so is the most reliable signal available in this sector.
• The making-good scope, stated: plaster, skirtings, decoration, and who moves what.

Damp work in a property transaction

A large share of the sector's work is generated not by an owner noticing a mark but by a transaction, and the commercial dynamics there are worth setting out separately.

A buyer's surveyor notes a high reading on a wall and recommends further investigation. That recommendation becomes a condition, and the condition becomes a specialist survey — commissioned under time pressure, from a firm that treats, with a sale waiting on it. The incentives at that moment are pointing one direction for everybody involved.

Two things follow that a seller and a buyer should each know. A treatment carried out to satisfy a condition may leave a guarantee document that does nothing for the actual cause, and a guarantee that does not transfer to the new owner is a document the buyer cannot rely on afterwards. Where the reading is genuinely unexplained, the more useful step for both parties is an independent assessment whose fee is small relative to the remedy being discussed.

For a seller, the position is more manageable when the building's condition is established before the property is marketed rather than during a negotiation. Evidence gathered without a deadline is worth more than evidence gathered against one.

Recurring mistakes

The remedy is bought from the firm that diagnosed it, on a report that never eliminated anything. External repairs the building needed are deferred because an internal treatment was cheaper, and the water keeps arriving. Replastering is carried out before the wall has dried, and the finish fails from behind. Ventilation is reduced during a renovation and condensation is then treated as a masonry problem. A guarantee is relied on without anybody reading what voids it. And on a property being sold, a treatment is commissioned to satisfy a buyer's surveyor rather than to fix anything, which achieves the transaction and leaves the building as it was.

The two Cypriot conditions worth naming

Salt. Coastal buildings in Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos and the Famagusta area absorb salt from the air and, on older properties, from the materials themselves. Salt holds moisture from the atmosphere and it conducts, which affects both how a wall behaves and what a meter reads on it. A treatment addressing water on a wall whose problem is salt contamination will not stop the staining.

Air conditioning. Cooling a room drops surface temperatures below the dew point of the air around them, and moisture condenses on the coldest surface available — behind furniture on an external wall, on an untreated reveal, or around a lintel. The mark that appears is frequently attributed to the building's fabric when it is a consequence of how the building is being run.

Both produce marks that look like damp rising through a wall and neither is. Distinguishing them is the diagnostic work, and it is why the report matters more than the remedy in this trade.