ATi Damp SurveyHome / Areas / Barking and Dagenham
Independent damp surveys in Barking and Dagenham
Barking and Dagenham is dominated by one thing: the Becontree estate, built in the twenties and thirties and the largest council built estate in the world. Around twenty six thousand homes to a small number of repeating designs. That uniformity is unusual and genuinely useful, because a fault found in one house is very often present in its neighbours.
Barking and Dagenham housing, and what it does when it gets wet
The Becontree houses are cavity walled cottage estate homes with rendered or brick elevations, a functioning damp proof course and suspended timber ground floors over ventilated voids. A century on, they have been through right to buy, individual improvement and varying standards of maintenance, so the housing is uniform but its history is not. Ground level is the near universal issue: nine decades of paths, drives and patios laid over one another until the ground bridges the damp proof course.
The second recurring fault is ventilation. Underfloor airbricks blocked by patios, extensions and render, and windows replaced without trickle vents. Because so many of these houses have had the same improvements at similar times, the same defects turn up street after street, and a survey on one address will often correctly predict the next.
Barking town centre and the riverside add post-war and recent high density housing, with the airtight envelope and mechanical ventilation issues that come with newer construction, and the borough has a substantial private rented sector where disrepair reports need to distinguish building defects from occupation with measurements rather than opinion.
What we are usually called out to in Barking and Dagenham
- Ninety years of layered paths and drives bridging the damp proof course on Becontree housing
- Airbricks blocked by later patios, extensions and render
- Windows replaced without trickle vents, removing the ventilation the house relied on
- Timber decay at joist ends where an underfloor void has stopped being ventilated
- Housing disrepair reports that separate building defects from occupation
- Airtight recent flats with uncommissioned or disabled mechanical ventilation
Where we cover
We survey across the borough, from Barking and the riverside out through Dagenham and the Becontree estate.
- Barking
- Dagenham
- Becontree
- Chadwell Heath
- Rush Green
- Marks Gate
- Creekmouth
- Castle Green
- Goresbrook
Postcode districts
- IG11
- RM8
- RM9
- RM10
Book a survey in Barking and Dagenham
Same day response to every enquiry, and your written report within 24 hours of the visit. Put your postcode in the form and we will confirm cover and fee the same day.
Book a surveyOr call 020 3355 4944.
Barking and Dagenham questions
Everyone in our street has the same damp. Is that a coincidence?
On Becontree, almost certainly not. Thousands of these houses were built to the same handful of designs at the same time, so they share their construction, their damp proof course height and their underfloor ventilation arrangement. When a whole street has had drives and paths laid over the decades in a similar way, the same bridging fault appears in each. That is useful: the diagnosis is often quick and the remedy is the same modest external work rather than anything applied to the inside of the wall.
Our floorboards feel soft and the ground floor smells musty. What is that?
It is most often the underfloor void having stopped being ventilated. These houses have suspended timber floors over a void that airbricks were meant to keep dry. Block those with a patio, an extension or render and the void becomes still and damp, the joist ends built into the wall stay wet, and decay follows. It is a serious finding because it is structural, and it is also usually cheap to arrest once identified.