Treatment of Rising Damp
Walls of a solid brick construction are damp coursed by drilling a series of holes into the row of bricks at floor level and injecting a polysiloxane solution, under pressure, into the porous bricks. This is the level at which a damp course would be installed in new construction. The damp coursing solution, which is spirit based, readily permeates the brick work and surrounding mortar, and when cured, forms a board band of water proof masonry which extends below floor level.
To inject the damp coursing solution into the walls, a nozzle with an expanding tip is inserted into the hole. The solution is pumped in at pressures from 0 - 100psi., the solution can be readily seen permeating the brick work. In this way there is no magic as with some gravity feed methods and anyone watching can be sure the walls are correctly treated. The advantage of this method is that injection is into the most solid substrate and gaps and furrows in the mortar joints do not cause excessive wastage of product or difficulty in full thickness penetration.
Where a wall is made up of more than one layer of brick work, each layer is treated in stages. See the HIA-WICA Code of Practice (Adobe PDF File) for more information.
