2 cents from jc.

The actual rising damp situations compared to assumed, rumored and reported
ones would make the noize to message ratio of the pinheads seem very reasonable
indeed.  All the books talk about rising damp, but out in the real world you
don't see much of it.  Instead what you see are overflowing gutters,
misdirected downspouts, leaking cisterns, poorly graded sites, leaking
plumbing, overgrown vegetation, unreasonable expectations and lack of
maintenance.

But to paraphrase Mr. Spock, when you have eliminated all of the possible
explainations, you are left with the impossible, at that point you may indeed
have rising damp.

These can be challenging and  nasty little problems, hard to isolate and
measure and nearly impossible to explain to the bean counters.  Get someone who
has discipline and knowledge of the scientific method...you are going to be
running experiments.  Some one fun to hang out with would be good too.

Bryan certainly has the qualities you will be looking for.  (Is he blushing?
Its so hard to tell with the beard.)

I think I went over my estimate by about 48 cents.

-jc