In short: By the time you can see a stain, water has been somewhere it should not be for a while. The job is finding where it came in, not cleaning the mark.
Start where the water is, not where the stain is
Water travels. Staining under a kitchen cabinet may come from the cabinet, from a wet area on the other side of a wall, from a slab edge, or from outside entirely. We have recorded exactly this finding in Schofields, along with pinholes through a wet area membrane on nearby jobs.
The damp proof course at a party wall
On attached dwellings the DPC at a party wall is shared infrastructure. Where it is bridged or discontinuous, the moisture problem is genuinely not confined to one lot, and neither is the fix.
Downpipes and cladding
A downpipe not connected to the stormwater system discharges beside the house - we have recorded that here. So is cladding sitting too close to the concrete, which wicks moisture up into the wall. Both are cheap to correct and slow to cause visible damage.
Written by our local inspection team from work carried out in Schofields. Licensed building practitioners.
