Holyhead, Ynys Môn
The most exposed housing
we survey anywhere.
Holyhead takes weather that almost nowhere else in Wales does. Atlantic and Irish Sea rain arrives horizontally with nothing in front of it, carrying salt, onto stock that is mostly solid-walled and mostly older. Buildings here fail in ways that would be unusual thirty miles inland.
The local stock
What Holyhead is built from.
Horizontal, salt-laden, relentless
Rain that arrives sideways gets into joints that would never take water in a sheltered position. Render cracks, failed pointing and open cills matter enormously here, and the west and south-west elevations do nearly all of the suffering.
Not the same as rising damp
Airborne salt gets into masonry near the coast and holds moisture out of the air, producing damp patches and blown plaster that look exactly like rising damp and are not. Salt analysis distinguishes the two — and it is the test most treatment quotes leave out.
High private rented sector
A large proportion of the town's older terraces are let. That means damp complaints, and under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act it means fitness obligations that do not go away because the tenant was blamed for drying washing.
Big roofs, long gutters
Larger buildings and converted stock around the port, with roof and gutter runs long enough that a single blockage puts water into a wall all winter.
Worth knowing
Blaming the occupier does not survive a survey.
In exposed coastal stock the lifestyle argument gets used a lot, and it is usually wrong. A wall soaked from outside produces damp at any height, on the weather elevation, worse after a storm and unrelated to where anyone dries their washing.
Condensation has a different signature entirely: cold surfaces, corners, behind furniture, worse in winter, better when a window opens. The readings tell the two apart, and the report says which it is in plain terms — which is what a contract-holder, a council officer or an ombudsman actually needs.
What you get
The survey itself.
Internal moisture profile
Readings at height intervals across affected walls, so a pattern emerges rather than a single number.
Salt analysis
Hygroscopic salts separate genuine rising damp from a leak or from condensation. It is the test most treatment quotes skip.
External defect inspection
Render, pointing, downpipes, ground levels, slate. The cause is outside far more often than it is in the wall.
Air and surface conditions
Temperature, humidity and surface readings — the evidence that separates a ventilation problem from water ingress.
Independent and insured. We survey; we do not sell treatments, so there is no quote waiting at the end of the report.
Nearby
Also covered from Llangefni.
Holyhead and the surrounding area
Find out what it actually is.
Tell us the postcode and what you are seeing.