Why villas here get damp
Phuket’s climate tests buildings hard. Monsoon rain arrives horizontally and at pressure, humidity sits high for most of the year, and a villa can go from bone dry to saturated in an afternoon. A building that would be fine in a temperate climate can leak here within its first wet season if a single detail is wrong.
Most damp in new villas comes from workmanship rather than design: a membrane that stops short, a shower screed laid without fall, a condensate pipe that runs uphill. These faults are invisible on a sunny handover day, which is why they so often become the owner’s problem a few months later.
The six commonest causes
- Roof terraces and balconies over rooms: membranes not continuous, upstands too low, or falls running towards the building
- Showers and wet rooms: silicone used instead of a proper tanking membrane at the tray-to-wall junction
- Doors and windows: sliding tracks without drainage slots, and frames foamed in rather than sealed to the structure
- Air-conditioning condensate: pipes laid flat or falling backwards, leaking into ceiling voids
- Plumbing: weeping joints in hot and cold pipework hidden in walls and ceilings
- Rising and splash-back damp: render taken down to ground level, with no clearance or drainage at the base of the wall
Signs to look for
Damp shows itself in predictable places. Look for tide marks or brown rings on ceilings below terraces and bathrooms, blistered or flaking paint above skirtings, dark grout lines that never dry, black mould behind wardrobes and in corners, and a musty smell in rooms that have been shut up. Swollen door frames and skirting boards are another giveaway.
On handover day many of these signs have been freshly painted over, so absence of staining proves very little. That is why we look closely at skirtings, thresholds and ceilings under terraces, and use a moisture meter wherever anything looks or smells suspect, rather than relying on what the paint shows.
Tracing damp to its cause
The useful question is never just ‘is it damp?’ but ‘where is the water coming from?’. Pattern tells you a lot: damp concentrated at a shower junction points to tanking, a ring on the ceiling directly below a terrace drain points to the outlet detail, and damp that comes and goes with the air conditioning points to condensate.
We combine moisture readings, the shape and position of the staining, and an understanding of how the building was put together to identify the source. Our report then sets out the cause, the location and a specific remedy, in language the builder can act on. You can see the format in our sample report.
What a proper repair looks like
Painting over damp is not a repair, and neither is a bead of silicone. A proper fix removes the finishes around the fault, corrects the detail underneath — the membrane, the fall, the pipe joint — and then lets the area dry and confirms it is dry before redecorating.
Ask for the repair method in writing, and have the work checked before it is closed up again. If you are within your developer’s warranty, our guide to the defects-liability period explains how to use it, and our project management service can oversee the repair for you.
Before you accept the keys
The cheapest moment to deal with damp is before handover, while the developer still needs your signature. A pre-handover inspection checks every wet area and every ceiling below a terrace, with moisture readings wherever damp is suspected. For more on what typically goes wrong in villas, read common defects in Phuket villas, or see our fees.
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