So you need a damp proofing specialist?

There are several reasons why we occasionally need the help of a damp-proofing specialist. These can range from a damp patch on wall plaster; mould growing on walls and ceilings or, a pre house purchase damp survey.

By far the most effective way of finding any contractor is by recommendation and when you are lucky, a friend could have first hand experience of utilizing a local damp proofing firm and that is always worth considering.

However, assuming that’s not the case, how can you find a good firm and prevent the cowboy trader?

These days the net is the place we have a tendency to start and of course Google and Bing will provide lots of firms, once you enter ‘damp proofing’. But before believing all of the claims on company web site like ‘honest service’, ‘high quality workmanship’ or ‘fully qualified staff’ it can pay to check a little deeper.

In saying this we must recognise that a lot of people haven’t got hours and hours of time and energy to spend pre-vetting a damp proofing company before engaging them, so some short cuts are justified (usually).

An easy short cut to pre-vetted damp proofing specialists

In the UK there’s only 1 nationally recognised trade association for damp proofing contractors, therefore the Property Care Association is an excellent place to begin. The PCA have written standards they work to and companies have to meet these, and pass a strict financial, safe practices and insurance test before they are able to join. Better still, member firms are visited regularly and put through an independent quality audit.

Okay so the PCA want members and the members pay the associations running costs; should they threw them all out they’d be out of business, so can these checks be relied on?

By themselves no, they can not; all organisation have the odd bad member and you could be unlucky and get the worst PCA member, rather than the best. The truth is though, by selecting a PCA damp proofing member, you are already weeding out the non-members, anyone who has been vetted by nobody. On balance, you’ve already increased the chances of finding a good damp proofing firm, who are qualified, financially sound and well insured.

Right, so now we’ve narrowed the field down and a quick search using the PCA look for a contractor widget on the PCA web site will give you a summary of PCA members in your town.

That’s the main shortlist of damp proofing firms complete but how will you really find a very good?

What next? Visit the web site of every in turn and have a quick scan. Nowadays building a site is really a snip and a flashy site template with several generic images and photos is common – this tells you hardly any about those behind the company.

Look deeper though… You are searching for some real facts; some sign of substance behind all that damp proofing gloss.

Clues to a good firm include images of the staff, the boss, his managers and key employees. If the firm is small, all of the employees should be represented; in the end, if you can find only ten or so, then each one of these represents 10% of the service package – check them out. It’s hard for a shallow ‘front’ of a business to fake this part.

Next look at the footer of the contact and website. In the UK it is the law that all company web pages will need to have the dog owner details shown. Things like the real holding company name and it’s really registered company number and registered address. These allow you to check a firm’s past records such as for example court cases and financial records at Companies House (that is free). If these details is missing then move on – the business know the law and when they are breaking it in this manner, there’s a good reason for it and they have something to cover – beware vendors who wear masks!

Customer testimonials are used by many firms and it’s true that what customers say about damp proofing specialists they’ve used, mean much more than what the management say. However, anyone can write several glib sentences and call these a testimonial, so how is it possible to weed out the dodgy ones?

Once again it’s a case of looking just a little deeper; are there photographs of the happy clients? Are any commercial clients named (you can then check these exist with a straightforward search engine)? Commercial companies guard their brand and goodwill meticulously and most will have Google Alerts setup so that they see if anyone is utilizing their name in vain. So if all the testimonials on a traders site are from Mrs Smith or Mr Jones, without real details – ask yourself why.

Most sites nowadays could have a news section – that is key to getting under the skin of an organization. Is the news up-to-date? Which kind of news is ‘good’ in the companies’ eyes? If it’s about how great they’re, without real depth then shy away. Just think, what would you want to put on your news pages in the event that you were owning a company? Think about the achievements of your staff? New certificates for training; awards once and for all service; any charity efforts and events? Of House Extensions Barrow in Furness will have news about new services and jobs done well too – search for a real story which represents the efforts of several people behind the firm – this is always an excellent pointer to an ethical, good company. Should they care about their employees, they also care about their customers – both go together.

Accreditations will be the next good pointer. In the UK the minimum generic accreditation to search for is TrustMark. TrustMark is really a government sponsored set of basic consumer focused standards, which must be met by way of a company before they are able to display the logo. It’s not fool proof, but whether it’s not there – why not? Meeting these minimum standards; having insurance, a complaints procedure, customer deposit protection and similar basic good practice should be easy to meet for just about any half-descent company.

In construction related activity in the UK health and safety keeps growing in importance. Therefore the government has another sponsored scheme called CHAS. This means Construction Safe practices Scheme. The CHAS logo is only displayed if the firm have met and so are seen to continue to meet up basic safe practices standards, which are audited every year. CHAS is not hard to get, but once again, if it is missing be very careful – the firm either never focus on real construction sites (where CHAS is mandatory), or they can’t be bothered to do the work to meet the CHAS standard. If you are using a company without CHAS you may be inviting danger into your house or risking harm to others on the project – I’d avoid non CHAS members.

THE HOUSE Care Association is crucial when i said, but needless to say we are only looking at PCA member companies anyway.

Investors in People is also worth looking for. This is an established accreditation which is quite hard to win and even harder to keep. IIP is awarded whenever a firm can demonstrate commitment and good practice in eight areas, all of which revolve around staff engagement, training and development. We’ve all had poor service from bored, poorly motivated and underpaid staff. IIP is really a method of checking that the damp proofing company really put their staff first, so you are likely to served by enthusiastic, well paid and well motivated people – I understand who I’d rather deal with.

Whilst we’re on the subject of people why not check out the qualifications of the people in the firm. In the united kingdom there are national qualifications for damp proofing surveyors and technicians. Look for the letters CSRT after the surveyor’s names – this stands for Certificated Surveyor in Remedial Treatment also it implies that the surveyor has had his understanding of damp, timber defects and safe practices validated by independent examination. Anyone can call themselves a damp specialist surveyor – but are they? Should they have CSRT after their name they’re; if not then why not?

It’s similar with the damp proofing installer; the people who actually carry out the damp proofing on site. The Property Care Association run validated training for technicians and gleam City and Guilds NVQ level 2 for damp and timber treatment technicians – ask should they have this.