So you will need a damp proofing specialist?

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

By far the best way of finding any contractor is by recommendation and if you are lucky, a friend will have first hand experience of utilizing a local damp proofing firm and that’s always worth considering.

However, assuming that isn’t the case, how do you look for a good firm and steer clear of the cowboy trader?

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

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

A straightforward short cut to pre-vetted damp proofing specialists

In the UK there is 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 need to meet these, and pass a strict financial, health and safety and insurance test before they can join. Better still, member firms are visited regularly and subjected to an independent quality audit.

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

On their own no, they can’t; all organisation have the odd bad member and you could be unlucky and get the worst PCA member, rather than the best. The thing 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 probability 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 find a contractor widget on the PCA web site will give you a summary of PCA members in your area.

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

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

Look deeper though… You are interested in 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 represents 10% of the service package – check them out. It’s hard for a shallow ‘front’ of a small business to fake this part.

Next consider the footer of the contact and home page. In the UK it is the law that all company web pages will need to have the owner details shown. Things such as the true holding company name and it’s registered company number and registered address. These enable you to check a firm’s past records such as for example court cases and financial records at Companies House (that is free). If this information is missing then move on – the company know the law and if they’re breaking it in this way, there’s a good reason for it plus they have something to cover – beware vendors who wear masks!

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

Once again it is a case of looking just a little deeper; is there photographs of these happy clients? Are any commercial clients named (after that you can check these exist with a simple search engine)? Commercial companies guard their brand and goodwill meticulously and most could have Google Alerts create so that they see if anyone is utilizing their name in vain. So if all of the testimonials on a traders site are from Mrs Smith or Mr Jones, with no real details – consider why.

Most sites nowadays could have a news section – that is key to getting beneath the skin of an organization. Is the news up to date? Which kind of news is ‘good’ in the companies’ eyes? Whether it’s all about how great they’re, without real depth then shy away. Consider, what would you desire to placed on your news pages if you were running a company? Think about the achievements of your staff? Get more info for training; awards once and for all service; any charity efforts and events? Of course there will be news about new services and jobs well done too – choose a real story which represents the efforts of several people behind the firm – that is always an excellent pointer to an ethical, good company. Should they care about their staff, they also value their customers – both go together.

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

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

THE HOUSE Care Association is a must as I said, but needless to say we are only looking at PCA member companies anyway.

Investors in People can be worth looking for. This is an established accreditation that is quite hard to win and also harder to keep up. IIP is only awarded whenever a firm can demonstrate commitment and good practice in eight areas, 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 employees first, so you will probably served by enthusiastic, well paid and well motivated people – I know who I’d rather deal with.

Whilst we’re about people why not browse the qualifications of individuals in the firm. In the united kingdom there are national qualifications for damp proofing surveyors and technicians. Search for the letters CSRT following the surveyor’s names – this stands for Certificated Surveyor in Remedial Treatment also it shows that the surveyor has had his understanding of damp, timber defects and health and safety validated by independent examination. Anyone can call themselves a damp specialist surveyor – but are they? If they have CSRT after their name they are; 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 there is also a City and Guilds NVQ level 2 for damp and timber treatment technicians – ask if they have this.