Rising damp in New Town, Tasmania

Damp in New Town is rarely a mystery once someone has metered the wall and looked at the ground outside it. Rising Damp Hobart arranges that assessment, in writing, in Tasmania, before any repair is priced.

The New Town pattern

New Town has some of the oldest housing outside Battery Point, mixed in among much later infill, so two houses on the same street can be seventy years apart and need entirely different treatment. The flatter ground is a mixed blessing: there is less lateral damp than on the Battery Point slopes, but water that arrives has nowhere to run, and on the older solid-masonry places without a course that means a slow steady uptake through the base of the wall all winter. Original sandstone footings under a later brick wall are common here and worth identifying early, because the two materials behave differently.

Why it shows up when it does

New Town is predominantly 1840s–1900s, mixed Georgian through Victorian, on ground that is flat to gently falling. That combination sets what tends to go wrong: the era decides whether there was ever a damp proof course to fail, and the way the block sits decides whether you are dealing with water rising through the base of a wall or pressing against its side. Both are treatable and they are treated completely differently, which is the whole reason the assessment comes first.

Add the winter to it. Rain falls in every month here rather than in a season, and the drying months are short, so masonry rarely gets the long hot spell that resolves a mild damp problem on the mainland.

A damp assessment in New Town

The cost page carries indicative ranges for injection, replastering, drainage and stone repair. We do not publish a Tasmanian assessment fee, because rates here differ from the mainland and inventing one would not help you budget.

Nearby: South Hobart, Lenah Valley, Bellerive, Kingston.