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FOOL'S EYE VIEW
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Over the last couple of years, something strange has been happening to two of the walls in my sitting room. Damp appears to have been creeping up the wall before being stopped by something, to the extent that there is a tide mark at waist level around the room. Aha! Those of you in the know will, no doubt, immediately jump to the (incorrect) conclusion that I have a classic case of "rising damp". And I would too, although the builder has yet to return with his damp-meter thingy to check. In the meantime, I've discovered rising damp doesn't really exist and certainly not in a house that has a damp-proof course, which ours does. So says a chap called Mike Parrett, who's a building maintenance surveyor with Lewisham Council. In recent years, Mr Parrett has become a leading expert in damp problems and says he has yet to encounter a true case of rising damp caused by the failure of an existing damp-proof course. He's saved his council an absolute fortune because every time his team looked at a case of so-called rising damp, they found the problem was actually caused by one or more of: It's much cheaper to deal with the real cause, rather than puzzle over why installing a new damp-proof course doesn't fix the problem! As it happens, I trust my builder and I know I'll be able to discuss this fully with him, so I'm hoping that I don't have a genuine case of rising damp and also that I'm not going to get clobbered with a bill for thousands of pounds. Besides, my builder's already wondered aloud whether it might be leaking pipes. The thing is, if I hadn't keyed "rising damp" into Google (the search engine), I'd never have known that it doesn't really exist. Truly, it pays to do your own research. Home improvements can be costly and yet, year after year, we blithely get talked into installing double-glazing or replacing our perfectly serviceable boilers by smooth-talking salespeople. You may remember that only last month, Energywatch, the UK gas and electricity watchdog, heavily criticised British Gas' sales tactics. This followed a number of complaints from customers that believed they had been persuaded to buy new boilers unnecessarily. These companies have products to sell and, by 'eck, they're going to do their level best to get us to buy them. And, since many of us pay for home improvements by re-mortgaging or arranging a personal loan, it's all the more important to be sure we're spending our money wisely (because we're paying interest on these loans.) Unfortunately, many of us put our trust in "experts" and forget that, at the end of the day, these people are most likely trying to sell us a product and, therefore, our total faith in their advice may be misguided! Another Fool writer pointed out much the same thing - about us relying too much on the so-called experts - earlier this week. He was writing about Radio 4's Moneybox programme, which sent some researchers out to visit a bunch of commission-based Independent Financial Advisors. Needless to say, they came back rather disappointed, even shocked, by the spread of advice. The show ended with the comment: "You do have to go (to a meeting with an IFA) knowing quite a lot, or else you could end up with bad decisions made by advisors on your behalf." Perhaps, from now on, whenever we talk to sales staff of any kind, we ought to keep a mental image ready of the bewitching Iraqi Information Minister and his immortal words: "I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad." Then go away and check for yourself.