Environment and sustainability
Promoting environmentally friendly and sustainable building solutions is a central component of our company ethos. At the heart of this mission is our advocacy against potentially harmful, costly and often ineffective chemical treatments relating to timber decay and damp issues.
Our approach
We do not recommend treating structural timber elements with chemical insecticides, preservatives or fungicides. Our remedial advice is focused on addressing building defects in such a way as to minimise the conditions that decay organisms such as wood-boring beetle, dry rot and other fungus require to exist and thrive.
Timber treatments and preservatives
We believe that introducing robust environmental control methods to expand/establish ventilation, manage moisture distribution and improve structural detailing can protect existing timber elements from active and future decay.
Tailoring remedial strategies to tackle these issues directly rather than using over-prescribed and expensive chemical treatments means we can save our clients significant sums of money, particularly on large scale projects.
The works we recommend also fall under more traditional building repair/construction and often do not require specialist contractors to undertake them, resulting in yet more cost-savings for our clients.
Injected chemical dampproof courses and wall irrigations
We do not recommend the installation of chemical injected dampproof courses (DPC) to tackle issues of damp.
In-line with our strategy for addressing timber decay mechanisms, our remedial advice is grounded in environmentally responsible solutions that consider several factors. We avoid product led solutions allowing us to follow the evidence towards establishing the root causes of
your damp issues and help tailor responsible, long lasting and cost effective solutions. This includes an evaluation of original construction and past repairs, comment on passive and mechanical ventilation systems and investigation of environmental conditions (such as relative humidity and dew points).
Our approach offers our clients cost savings against installing expensive and impermeable chemical injected DPC’s and rendered irrigation systems, all of which often only act to temporarily mask issues of dampness or entrap moisture within vulnerable masonry.
Although it is tempting to assume that a historical or existing DPC has failed if there are signs of dampness, it is essential that you get a specialist to investigate the root cause/causes of the issue in detail prior to establishing a refurbishment strategy. This should include an evaluation of any existing DPC’s for condition, performance and service life as part of a broader survey into the health of the building.
Our commitment to being green
Six Heritage is committed to being a green and sustainable company. We use technology to record and document our site findings, rather than marking-up drawings to countless sheets of paper, and we issue all of our reports in a digital format rather than printing and mailing them. Our dedicated team of surveyors are also all committed to using public transport and/or cycling/walking to get to site where possible.
We are members of the Green Register for construction industry professionals and take our commitment to making a positive impact on our environment very seriously. Our team have experience working on several projects aimed at falling within the BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment
Method) framework.
