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Treatment of rising damp and salt decay: the historic masonry buildings of Adelaide, South Australia

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Abstract

The City of Adelaide suffers from rapid damage to historic building materials due to salts, rising damp, and damp-proof course failures. Adelaide City Council has partially funded repairs to over 400 buildings in the past 15 years. To begin to examine the scope of this problem and the effectiveness of various treatments, 24 historic buildings in Adelaide were examined, with a focus on the building materials, historic interventions and current treatments applied to treat rising damp and salt decay. Analysis of 90 samples found high levels of sodium sulfate, sodium chloride and sodium nitrate in cellars, ground water and building materials, suggesting a clear example of rising damp. Samples of disintegrating masonry, depth profiles acquired by drilling, poultices and damp proof courses (DPC) were analyzed by Ion Chromatography (IC) and Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled with Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (ESEM/EDS). Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP) and capillarity test were carried out in the building materials and DPCs showing that porous materials with high porosity, small pores and low strength are more prone to salt weathering. The City of Adelaide is a natural laboratory for comparing and analyzing different treatments of salt-laden masonry, with hundreds of treated buildings of the same age, in the same environment, and with similar building materials.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Ministry of Science and Technology JCCM, Toledo, Spain and the European Social Fund, for supporting a post-doctoral fellowship to develop this work. We thank Giacomo Chiari, chief scientist of the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), which was the host institution for the post-doctoral fellow of Paula Lopez-Arce. We would like to thank to Joy Keeney from the Organic Materials Lab (GCI) for her help with the ion chromatography analyses, Richard Cook for the access to Torrens Building for the collection of samples and to the staff of the Heritage section of the Adelaide City Council for their generosity in assisting our research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Getty Conservation Institute, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA, 90049, USA

    P. Lopez-Arce & E. Doehne

  2. Adelaide City Council, Adelaide, Australia

    J. Greenshields

  3. Laboratorio de Petrología Aplicada, Unidad Asociada CSIC-UA, Departamento de CC. de la Tierra y del Medio Ambiente, Universidad de Alicante, 03080, Alicante, Spain

    D. Benavente

  4. Heritage Consultant, Melbourne, Australia

    D. Young

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  1. P. Lopez-Arce
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  2. E. Doehne
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  3. J. Greenshields
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  4. D. Benavente
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  5. D. Young
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Correspondence to P. Lopez-Arce.

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Lopez-Arce, P., Doehne, E., Greenshields, J. et al. Treatment of rising damp and salt decay: the historic masonry buildings of Adelaide, South Australia. Mater Struct 42, 827–848 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-008-9427-1

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