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A £26,000 research grant awarded to Dr. Goeffrey Mason to find preventative measures for rising damp. Dr. Mason is a lecturer in Chemical Engineering at Loughborough University.
Bev Smith speaks over images of old properties and says that £3 million is given each year in government grants to cure the rising damp problem, and this is particularly needed for houses built without damp courses in the years before the 1880s. Present policy of restoring houses rather than re-building means that the £3 million grant bill is likely to double in the next few years.
Current methods are ineffective and Dr Mason has found that by ripping off plaster from the walls and allowing the walls to breath, the damp is cured. Although not entirely practical these findings contradict much research before it.
But damp in wood is a different matter and can cause structural damage. Dr Mason is trying to find out how much water is in a wall with damp and how quickly it moves. He talks about the effects of damp, and demonstrates by crumbling plaster easily from the wall.
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