We are a referral service, not a builder. That distinction is the whole point of us.
Rising Damp Newcastle is a lead referral service. We connect Newcastle property owners with independent damp specialists holding the appropriate NSW Fair Trading licence. We do not carry out the work ourselves.
We exist because rising damp is one of the few building problems an ordinary owner cannot name. People can see a wet band on a wall and have no idea whether to ring a plumber, a painter, a bricklayer or a builder. Most ring a painter, and the paint comes off again the following winter.
Newcastle's inner ring is Victorian and Federation brick — terraces through Cooks Hill and the city, workers' cottages across Wickham, Islington and Tighes Hill, and inter-war brick and tile spreading out behind them. Almost none of the pre-war stock was given a damp-proof course that still works, and a great deal of it never had one.
Terraces make it harder. A shared wall is shared in both directions: the damp does not stop at a title boundary, the wall dries from one face instead of two, and any treatment is a conversation with a neighbour before it is a quote. It is the single biggest practical difference between damp work here and damp work in a detached-housing city.
Salt does the damage. Groundwater carries dissolved salts up into the wall and leaves them behind as it evaporates; on the coast, from Merewether round to Stockton, more arrives on the wind. Those crystals expand as they form, and that is what crumbles mortar and takes the face off a brick. The water moves the salt — the salt breaks the wall.
We do not publish reviews we did not receive, before-and-after photographs of work we did not do, or a fixed price for a wall nobody has looked at. Every figure on this site is a range, and the range is honest about how wide it is.
In New South Wales, residential building work valued over $5,000 including GST requires a licence issued by NSW Fair Trading. We only refer specialists holding the licence appropriate to the work they carry out. You are entitled to ask for the licence number and to check it yourself on the Fair Trading register before you agree to anything.
Rising Damp Newcastle