Before you hire anybody
There is no licence called salt damp proofing. The one that matters is the building work contractor's licence, and the check is free.
Rising Damp Adelaide passes enquiries to an independent specialist and does not carry out the work. That makes this page easy to write honestly: we have nothing to lose by telling you exactly what to ask them.
Building work in this state is licensed under the Building Work Contractors Act 1995, administered by Consumer and Business Services. The threshold commonly cited for a building work contractor's licence is building work valued over $20,000, including labour and materials. Confirm the current figure with CBS on 131 882 rather than taking it from any website, including this one — thresholds are changed by regulation and they do move.
What there is not is a salt damp licence, or a damp proofing licence. Queensland licenses waterproofing as its own trade class and New South Wales licenses it above a threshold. South Australia does neither, which means the words on a van tell you nothing at all here.
Salt damp work on bluestone is destructive if it is done wrong, and it is done wrong often. Cutting a damp course into a wall, repointing a whole elevation in the wrong mortar, or rendering over stone that needed to breathe are all decisions that cost more to reverse than they cost to make. The licence question is the easy one. The mortar question is the one that decides whether your wall is better or worse in ten years.
Moisture readings at several heights up the wall, and a reason for the diagnosis that is not just experience. A tide mark is evidence; an opinion is not.
The downpipe, the paving level, the neighbour's garden bed, the watering system. Salt damp and a leak look alike at skirting height.
Ask for the number and the name it is held in, then confirm it with CBS. A licence in another trade is not a licence for this work.
The certificate, not an assurance that there is one.
On bluestone this is the whole question. A modern cement mix in an old wall traps the salt rather than letting it out.
A licence says who may do the work. It says nothing about whether the work is the right work. A properly licensed contractor installing a damp course in a wall whose real problem was a raised path has done everything lawfully and changed nothing. Ask about the diagnosis first and the paperwork second.
The oldest stone stock sits in the inner ring and along the coast, and that is where most of the calls come from.
Tell us what the wall is doing. We will arrange someone to meter it and put the cause in writing.
