Bring us the other quote

The rule this page runs on

We read documents. We do not review businesses. Nothing we write will name, rate, grade, rank or characterise whoever quoted you, and if you send us their details we will not use them.

There is a serious reason for that and a boring one. The serious one is that a trade name attached to a critical opinion is somebody's livelihood, and there is no version of that which ends well for anybody, including you. The boring one is that it is not relevant. A good business can produce a thin diagnosis on a busy week. A thin diagnosis is thin regardless of whose letterhead it arrived on.

So the scorecard scores the evidence. Did anyone drill the wall. Is there a moisture profile. Is hygroscopic moisture content reported separately from total moisture. Was the salt tested. Were the ground levels measured. Each item is either present in your paperwork or it is not, and the standard it comes from is cited beside it so you can check us as easily as you can check them.

You are also entirely free to take our review back to the same contractor and ask for the missing items. A fair number of them have the information and simply did not send it. That is a good outcome, and it happens.

Eleven things a real diagnosis contains

• Drilled masonry samples. BS 6576 requires them. If nobody drilled the wall, nobody diagnosed anything.
• A vertical moisture profile — samples at six to eight heights up the wall, taken past the last visible sign of damp, rather than one reading at skirting height.
• Depth intervals at each height, commonly 0-10, 10-20 and 20-40 mm, because a wall wet from the inside and a wall wet from the outside look identical at the surface.
• Total moisture content by oven-dry weight, from a laboratory, not inferred from a hand-held instrument.
• Hygroscopic moisture content measured at 75% relative humidity and reported separately, so free capillary water can be calculated by subtraction. BRE Digest 245 is built on that comparison.
• Salt species and percentage by weight, with about 0.5% by weight as the working threshold for concern.
• External ground, paving and garden bed levels measured against the damp-proof course. The code minimums are 150 mm above finished ground, 75 mm above paving that slopes away, and 50 mm where a carport or verandah protects the wall.
• The location, type and condition of any existing damp course — including whether it is perfectly intact and simply bridged by render, hard pointing or soil.
• A cavity and subfloor inspection. A borescope regularly converts a presumed rising damp case into a bridged cavity in about ten minutes.
• Gutters, downpipes, stormwater, plumbing and wet areas assessed and excluded, with the exclusion tests named rather than assumed.
• Every alternative cause explicitly ruled in or out, what is proven separated from what is inferred, and a staged sequence that puts the prerequisites before the treatment.

How to read the scope of works, line by line

A scope of works is where the money is actually decided, and it is the part most people skim. The test is simple: could a different contractor pick this document up and build exactly the same barrier from it? If the answer is no, it is not a specification, it is a heading with a price under it.

The signals worth stopping on

None of these proves anything on its own. Several of them together, on a five-figure quote, is a reason to slow down for a week.

• The inspection was free and performed by the business that would do the work. That is the market standard rather than a scandal in itself — but the diagnosis and the sale came out of the same visit, and we cannot find an Australian damp contractor who declares that conflict anywhere.
• Nobody drilled the wall.
• The evidence is a photograph of a meter. On salt-loaded masonry that instrument reads high while the wall is dry, and readings above 100% moisture content — a physically impossible figure that leaves no room for the bricks — are common.
• No salt analysis, on a wall that is visibly blooming with salt.
• No mention of your ground levels, your garden bed, your downpipes or your subfloor. The most common cause of genuine rising damp in Australian houses is a damp course that has been buried, and that is a few hundred dollars to correct.
• A per-metre rate well below the market. This is the one that feels like good news.
• A very long guarantee with no terms document. Twenty, twenty-seven and thirty year guarantees are advertised in this market as badge images. Ask for the exclusions in writing before you ask about anything else.
• Pressure to sign today, a price that expires tonight, or a discount for deciding on the spot. Rising damp is a process measured in decades, and the heritage guide recommends monitoring for at least a year before acting. There is no such thing as a damp emergency in a wall that has been doing this since 1890.
• Language about structural collapse, resale value or your family's health used to close the sale rather than to describe the wall.
• Passive electro-osmosis — an earthed copper strip in the wall — offered as the treatment. Water movement creates the electrical potential, not the other way round, so earthing it cannot stop capillary rise. The heritage guide lists it among old treatments that should no longer be considered.
• A promise to inject a concrete slab against rising damp. There is no capillary course in a slab to inject, and an under-slab membrane cannot be retrofitted once the house is built.

The number per metre, and why cheap is the wrong kind of comfort

The Australian heritage guide names the mechanism in print. Dampcoursing fluid and creams are expensive, it says, so there is cost pressure on contractors to use less — and it goes on to state that unscrupulous contractors might dilute the fluid with additional solvent, giving insufficient water repellency, or space the drill holes at wider intervals than recommended, giving incomplete coverage. Both are invisible the moment the holes are plugged and the wall is made good. Nobody can inspect the result. Not you, not a building inspector, not us.

Published Australian rates for the same chemical damp course disagree by roughly a factor of seven, which tells you the market is not pricing a single product. Treat the table below as a sanity check rather than a benchmark, and ask what the number buys.

What a guarantee is worth without its exclusions

Long guarantees are the loudest thing in this category and the least examined. The question is never the number of years. It is what the document excludes, and what voids it.

Ask for the terms as a document before you ask about the term. Then read for the exclusions that will actually apply to your house: a blocked gutter, a garden bed rebuilt against the wall, extensive repointing carried out over the treated course, a water-repellent coating applied to the wall face, and — the important one — condensation, which is behind a large share of the symptoms these guarantees get sold against.

Several of those exclusions are not unfair, and it is worth saying so. A new damp course genuinely does need the gutters kept clear and the garden bed kept back, and extensive repointing really can bridge a treated course, which is a documented trap rather than a loophole. That is precisely why the exclusions belong in front of you before you sign rather than in a drawer afterwards.

One thing holds regardless of what any guarantee document says. Under Australian Consumer Law you have consumer guarantees that a contract cannot remove, and a term purporting to exclude them is void. A written guarantee is an addition to those rights, not a substitute for them.

We are not going to set that document against ours on this page. A guarantee is worth reading in full, not in a comparison table written by one of the parties to it.

Sometimes the other quote is fine, and we say so

This needs saying without hedging, because it is the part people assume is marketing. A fair number of the quotes we read are reasonable. When one is, we write that down, and you should proceed with it.

In practice that looks like this: samples were drilled, there is a vertical profile, hygroscopic moisture content is reported separately, the salt was tested, the levels were measured against the damp course, the prerequisites are sequenced ahead of the injection, and the price sits in a defensible range for the metres involved. That is a competent job by somebody who is not us, and telling you so costs us a sale we were never entitled to.

There is a second version of the same outcome that people find harder to hear. Sometimes the quote is competent and the diagnosis is still wrong, because the wall was never the problem — condensation, a bridged cavity, a downpipe, a failed shower membrane on the other side of the wall, or salt left behind by a source that was cured years ago. And sometimes the diagnosis is right and the treatment is not ours to sell. We will tell you that too, and there is nothing at the end of it for us.

How the review works, and what it costs

A document review is a fixed fee, quoted before we start. It is desk work with no site attendance and no testing, so it sits well below the cost of an investigation. Where it escalates into a full investigation with drilled samples and laboratory analysis, that is the fixed-fee diagnosis, which runs to the ranges published on that page, and the review fee comes off it.

One last piece of practical housekeeping before you sign anything with anybody. Check the licence number on the QBCC's public register. Building work in Queensland above a dollar threshold — commonly stated as $3,300 including materials and GST, though you should confirm the current figure with the QBCC — requires a licensed contractor and triggers Home Warranty Scheme insurance. It takes two minutes and it is the cheapest due diligence available to you.

1. Send what you were givenThe quote, any report or readings, the photographs, and photographs of the wall itself including the outside at ground level. Leave the business name off. We do not want it and will not use it.
2. We read it against the standardsEach item of a defensible diagnosis is marked present or absent, with the source cited beside it — BS 6576 for masonry sampling, BRE Digest 245 for the vertical profile and the hygroscopic comparison, the Australian heritage guide for sequence, salt and the one-year monitoring instruction.
3. You get a written scorecardPlain English, printable, and yours to use however you like. It sets out what the evidence establishes, what it does not, and the specific questions to put back to whoever quoted you.
4. If it needs testing, we say soA document review cannot create evidence that was never gathered in the first place. Where the honest answer is that nobody yet knows, the recommendation is a full investigation with drilled samples and laboratory analysis — from us, or from any independent party you would rather use.

What it costs

Questions we actually get asked

Will you tell me whether the company that quoted me is any good?

No. We review the evidence behind the recommendation, not the business that made it. Nothing we write will name, rate, grade or characterise them, and we would rather you did not send us their details at all. It is not evasion — it is that the question cannot be answered from a document. What can be answered from a document is whether the diagnosis rests on drilled samples, a moisture profile, hygroscopic moisture content and salt analysis, or on a surface reading. That is the question that decides whether you should sign.

What happens if you agree with their quote?

We write that down and you go ahead with them. It happens often enough that it needs saying on the page rather than in a footnote. Reviewing a quote is not an audition for the work, and the review is charged whether we end up agreeing or disagreeing, precisely so that the conclusion is not worth anything to us either way.

Do you need to visit the house, or can you review the paperwork?

Most reviews are desk work. Photographs of the wall, the outside at ground level, and the documents you were given are usually enough to establish what evidence exists and what does not. What a desk review cannot do is create evidence nobody gathered — if the paperwork has no drilled samples in it, no amount of reading will produce a moisture profile. In that case the review tells you exactly which tests would settle the question, and you can commission them from us or from anyone independent you prefer.

They have offered a thirty-year guarantee. Should that reassure me?

Not on its own, and not until you have read the terms. The years are the easiest part of a guarantee to advertise and the least informative. Ask for the terms as a document, and read specifically for what is excluded and what voids the cover — blocked gutters, a garden bed rebuilt against the wall, repointing over the treated course, a sealer applied to the wall face, and condensation. Some of those conditions are entirely reasonable maintenance obligations. The problem is not their existence, it is finding out about them afterwards. Separately, and regardless of what any document says, Australian Consumer Law gives you consumer guarantees a contract cannot exclude.

The price drops if I sign this week. Is that normal?

It is common, and it is worth treating calmly rather than urgently. Rising damp is a process measured in decades, and the Australian heritage guide recommends completing the basic housekeeping and monitoring the result for at least a year before inserting any damp course. Nothing about the physics of your wall changes on Friday. A reasonable response is to ask, in writing, for the price to be held while you obtain an independent view of the evidence. A contractor confident in their diagnosis will agree to that without difficulty.

The quote is far cheaper than the others. Isn't that just a good deal?

It might be. It might also be the one part of this trade where corner-cutting is genuinely undetectable, because the barrier ends up sealed inside a wall. The heritage guide names the two mechanisms directly: diluting the fluid with extra solvent, and spacing the drill holes wider than recommended. A third is treating one face of a wall that needed both. The practical defence is to make the quote specific — hole diameter, spacing of about 120 mm, depth to within about 30 mm of the far face, and fluid volume per linear metre, all in writing — and to hold the job to those numbers. If a rate sits well under about $100 per linear metre, those are the questions to ask before you ask anything else.

I paid for treatment two years ago and the wall is still crumbling. Can you review that?

Yes, and it is one of the more common reviews we do. The usual finding is not a failed product but an incomplete scope. A chemical damp course stops water rising; it does nothing about the salt already in the wall above it, which keeps dissolving in humid weather and re-crystallising in dry weather and keeps breaking the masonry down. The Australian heritage guide illustrates exactly that case, and its seventh key step exists because damp-course insertion alone is not enough. The test that settles it is a drilled profile with hygroscopic moisture content reported separately: if free water is now negligible and salt content is high, the damp course is doing its job and salt is the remaining problem — which is a different scope, and a different trade, from another round of injection.