Unley, SA
Assessment and treatment referrals for bluestone with brick quoins, 1880s to 1900s.
Rising Damp Adelaide covers Unley and the surrounding suburbs. An assessment takes about an hour on site and ends with a written explanation of what the wall is doing — not a sales visit with a price on the end of it.
Unley is bluestone villa country, and the assessments here follow a consistent shape. The stone looks immaculate — bluestone is dense and takes up very little water — while the lime mortar between the courses has quietly turned to sand at the base of the wall. Owners often only notice when a skirting goes soft or paint stops holding along a level line inside. The repair usually involves repointing in lime rather than cement, and on these walls that choice matters more than almost anything else in the job.
Two things shape every assessment in Unley. The walls are bluestone with brick quoins, 1880s to 1900s, which sets where the moisture and the salt actually travel. And the damp course is none, or a failed slate course, which sets whether this is a missing barrier, a broken one, or a bridged one.
Worth remembering that Adelaide is not a wet city. It is one of the driest capitals in the country. What it has is the swing between a wet winter and a genuinely hot dry summer, and that swing is the engine that drives salt into the stone.
The assessment and written diagnosis are $450 plus GST. A fixed price follows, itemised, so you can see what is drainage, what is damp course and what is stone repair.
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.
