They say every day is a learning day, so hopefully this blog teaches you something pretty basic and pretty useful! Salt – it attracts moisture. We have all seen it before, leave a pot of salt open to the atmosphere (indoors) and it clumps together and goes hard, it has stuck together with the moisture from the air. So what has this got to do with buildings? Building materials commonly have sodium (salt) in them, and there’s even salt in the atmosphere too (especially in coastal locations). So when a material gets wet, such as a wall, or plaster, for example, it releases salt – the salt comes out of the structure. Maybe (and quite commonly) the moisture came from internal condensation (probably not from rising damp, and certainly not from a “failed DPC” – more on that another day!) and poor ventilation…. But now that moisture has got into the fabric of the building it has drawn out the salts from the structure…. The problem with this is that the salt (on the wall for example) will attract more moisture, compounding the problem! Commonly, people will wipe the salt off with a damp cloth, making the wall wet again and further exasperating and restarting the problem! The solution? Brush the salt off with a stiff brush…
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