Rising damp in Sandy Bay, Tasmania

If a wall in your Sandy Bay house is staining, flaking or smelling damp, the useful first step is a diagnosis rather than a quote. Rising Damp Hobart arranges an on-site assessment: moisture readings through the wall, a look at how the ground sits against it, and a written finding.

Sandy Bay housing and damp

Sandy Bay runs from grand Victorian and Federation homes near the water up to later brick further back. The older stock generally does have an original damp proof course — slate or bitumen felt — and the common fault is not that it is missing but that it has been bridged. Decades of added paving, rendered plinths, raised garden beds and re-levelled driveways build a path for moisture straight around a course that is otherwise still doing its job. On the sloping blocks the uphill side of the house is where it shows first, because that is where the ground sits highest against the wall.

How the ground works against Sandy Bay homes

Two things decide the diagnosis here. The stock is 1880s–1930s Victorian and Federation, which tells you whether a damp proof course was ever installed to begin with — below a certain age, none was. The ground is sloping, mostly falling away, which tells you where the water is arriving from. Get either wrong and the repair is the wrong repair.

The climate is the multiplier. Hobart is not an especially wet city — about 611.0mm a year across 86.8 days of rain — but it is a cold one, and cold walls under a 78 per cent morning humidity in July do not give moisture back.

Booking a Sandy Bay assessment

Costs vary more by wall than by suburb. Sandstone takes more material and more drilling time than solid brick, and a wall you can only reach from one side costs more than one you can work from both. The cost page sets out the ranges.

Nearby: North Hobart, New Town, South Hobart, Lenah Valley.