Rising damp removal from historical masonries: A still open challenge

Rising damp is one of the main problems affecting historical masonry structures all over the world, as it jeopardises materials integrity, inhabitants' health and performances of the building envelope. Despite the great effort spent over last century to understand water capillary rise phenomenon, the problem of damp removal is still substantially open, as not only the technologies adopted in the field frequently fail, but their working principles in real masonries have not been fully elucidated yet. This paper aims at providing, through a review of international literature, a coherent picture of the technologies so far proposed for the removal of rising damp and the results obtained, both in laboratory and on-site. Based on the results, the open challenges for research in this field are tentatively pointed out, according to the author's opinion. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.