A shared wall is shared in both directions. It is the single biggest practical difference between damp work in Newcastle and damp work in a detached-housing city.
Talk it throughRising Damp Newcastle arranges damp assessments across Newcastle and the Hunter.
A detached wall dries from both faces. A party wall dries from one, so it holds moisture longer and the salt builds up faster. The wall is also usually single-skin brick laid straight onto footings, and in Cooks Hill and the city terraces it very often has no damp-proof course at all.
Moisture does not stop at a title boundary. If the wall is wet on your side it is wet in the middle, and frequently on theirs. Treating only your face can push the evaporation — and therefore the salt damage — into next door, which is both a poor result and a good way to fall out with someone you share a wall with.
In practice the honest sequence is: assess, establish how far the damp runs, and have the conversation before anyone quotes. It is slower and it is the only version that works.
A course injected from one side only takes longer and costs more per metre. Rear lanes, no side access and a floor that may have to come up all add to it. That is why the range on our cost page is wide rather than a tidy single figure.
A century of resurfacing has lifted the lanes and yards behind Newcastle's terraces. Where the ground outside now sits above the damp course, water travels over the top of the barrier and the course is intact and irrelevant. Correcting that is sometimes the entire job.
We arrange assessments across Newcastle and the lower Hunter, including:
Rising Damp Newcastle