About Us

With over 35 years experience and 20 years in business we offer a friendly reliable and trustworthy service. Situated in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, we pride ourselves on the correct diagnosis for dampness and timber decay, we give competitive prices on all work with a 30 year guarantee.

Timber & Damp Reports: Our surveyors will inspect the property and identify the causes of dampness and timber defects before providing you with a report of our findings. If treatment is required, we will provide a detailed quotation explaining the nature of the proposed works along with a clear quotation.

http://www.checkatrade.com/PreservitLtd/

Rising Damp

Signs to help identify rising damp:
Without using any equipment, you can use certain visual and touch signs to help identify rising damp. Typical signs that can identify rising damp include:
* Tide marks on the walls up to 1 metre caused by evaporation and salts from the ground.
* Damp patches and staining about 1 metre up a wall from the ground
* Wall paper coming off or peeling from the wall
* Decayed skirting boards

Wet & Dry Rot

Wet rot, whilst typically not as difficult to eradicate as dry rot, certainly does occur more often and can nevertheless cause severe damage within your property. The rot attacks timber in damp conditions and if allowed to go unchecked or without wet rot treatment, can be a common cause of structural defects within a property.

Penetrating Damp

Penetrating damp (or moisture ingress horizontally through the wall fabric) is an issue that can affect all buildings. It may look harmless however, penetrating damp can be damaging to a property even if it does not penetrate all the way through a wall often leading to other damp proofing issues as well as wet rot, damp plasterwork, increased heat loss, damp musty smells, frost damage into masonry and unsightly water damage on potentially both the outside and inside of a property.

Condensation

The most common form of unwanted dampness in buildings is water from the air that forms as condensation.
The air in buildings can have a high level of relative humidity due to the activity of the occupants (e.g. cooking, drying clothes, breathing etc.). When this water laden air comes into contact with cold surfaces such as windows and cold walls it can condense, causing water to be deposited. The point at which the water held in the air changes from vapour to liquid is known as the dew point.
Condensation is often associated with poor heating and ventilation in buildings, but this simple view can be misleading. Condensation is chiefly a winter problem, as the external air temperature is low and external walls and windows are cold. The usual sequence of events is as follows:
* Cold air enters the building
* The air is warmed for the comfort of the occupants.
* The warm air takes up moisture.
* The warm, moist air comes into contact with cold surfaces, walls, windows, etc. and is cooled below its Dew Point.
* Condensation occurs as the excess moisture is released.
Walls in kitchens and bathrooms (where atmospheric moisture levels are usually highest), solid external walls, un-insulated solid floors and cold bridges such as concrete lintels set in cavity walls are commonly the areas in which condensation takes place.
Intermittent heating and cooling of the property can aggravate condensation problems, since it allows warm damp air to cool, reducing its capacity to hold water. Dew points are reduced allowing condensation to occur. When the air is reheated water is taken back into the air only to be deposited again when the air temperature drops again.

Woodworm

Common Furniture Beetle / Woodworm / Anobium Punctatum:
The most common wood destroying beetle found in British buildings today is the Common Furniture Beetle Anobium punctatum. This insect commonly occurs outdoors infesting dead tree trunks, branches and other forms of exposed timber but, the main cause for concern is its ability to infest indoor timbers in a variety of situations.
Adult beetles emerge from timber in the spring and summer. Very soon after mating the female beetle lays approximately 30 eggs, often into cracks and crevices in the timber she has just vacated. Usually within a month the eggs hatch and the young grubs begin burrowing into the timber. Here they remain for between two and four years slowly eating and burrowing beneath the surface of the wood. Eventually the mature lava excavates a pupation chamber just beneath the surface of the wood. Following the pupation process the adult beetle cuts a hole in the surface of the timber and emerges to start the process once more. It is the appearance of new emergence holes and the dust (frass) that falls from them that often indicates the presence of an active infestation of woodworm.
The woodworm beetle is significant because given the right conditions it can infest a wide variety of timber products including structural building timbers, furniture and wooden ornaments. If left unchecked infestations can lead to severe structural weakening and eventually total collapse.