subject: Treat Walls Against Moisture And Capillary Rise [print this page] When talking about rising damp or capillary walls, it means the same scourge: the continued presence of moisture in the ancient walls and the tendency of the latter to migrate into the walls in contact with moist soil. It is therefore imperative to hire a perfectly fair and complete diagnosis to ensure the efficiency promised by the proposed damp treatment, and finally eliminate the unpleasant consequences caused by moisture.
What is a capillary rise?
A capillary rise is characterized by permanent migration of water from the foundations of a building. It occurs at the bottom of any wall, from the interior and exterior floors. Capillary rise are causing damage to multiple manifestations: dark spots of moisture, efflorescence, peeling coatings, blister plasters, widening joints ... Their size depends on the nature of the material of the wall and its power of evaporation, but can reach up to five meters high, and covers the entire wall thickness. Limit moisture is often apparent in the form of vague, and can affect the height of a building.
What are the factors contributing to rising damp?
There are a series of five interrelated factors necessarily met and to explain the presence of rising damp: a water passage under the building, water loaded with minerals, an electrical charge a land with capillaries and no foundation sealed all together explains the phenomenon. The contact of water with ground material generates an electric charge resulting in the rise of the water into the capillary walls. Capillary rise therefore result in part of the porosity of the materials used: the tiny cracks in the concrete, brick or cement encourage vertical growth of the water. Thus, it is sufficient to remove one of these factors for the capillary rise is ultimately ineffective.
What are the remedies against rising damp?
Among these solutions, there is a drainage device or vertical capillary break, damp proofing, the injection of water repellents, traps atmospheric or electro-osmosis. This solution is interesting because it is a patented idea for several decades, to dry out the walls with electrical probes fixed in the walls of capillaries with. So natural, wall and floor have an opposite electrical polarity. This potential difference tends to draw water from the soil to the wall because of the minerals in the water are always moving the positive pole to the negative pole and back into the capillaries. The principle of electro-osmosis is to reverse this trend, and thus suppress rising damp down under the influence of an electrical field provided by the presence of electrode.
