Help & Documentation

Getting started with DampApp Pro takes a few minutes. This is a practical first-survey path: set up once, learn where your work lives, then capture and export a report.

1. Download and install: Get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Create an account PRO : Sign up with your email address or Google account. An account is optional, but recommended — it securely syncs your surveys to the cloud and lets you recover them on another device.
3. Complete your profile: In Settings, add your name, company details and qualifications. This information appears on every report.
4. Learn the home screen: Your survey cards are your working list. Tap a card to continue a draft; use search and filters to find older work; use New Survey to begin a new record.
5. Work through the survey dashboard: After creating a survey, use its dashboard cards to move between details, rooms, observations, photographs, readings and optional tools. Complete only the cards relevant to the property, and return to a card whenever you need to refine the evidence.
6. Review before export: Open the report preview, check names, dates, photos, findings and recommendations, then make any needed edits in the relevant card. AI output is always a draft for you to review.
7. Generate the report: When the review is ready, tap Share or Email to create the finished PDF and save or send it using your device's share options.

For the illustrated route from download to PDF, visit the Getting Started guide. Then read Tips to work faster and the articles under Building your survey.

Match your country's spelling, terminology and tax identifiers automatically.

• Regional spelling: Setting your country aligns spelling variants (e.g. mould vs mold, vapour vs vapor) across the interface, the interactive tools and the generated PDF.
• Corporate identifiers: Company profiles adjust the tax-identifier label (VAT, ABN, GST/HST, TRN, EIN) to your region.
• AI in your dialect: Your region is sent with AI requests, so AI Polish and the executive summary respond in your regional English.

DampApp Pro is offline-first — the parts of a survey you do on site never depend on a signal.

• Fully offline: Capturing rooms, photos, meter readings, floor plans and signatures — and generating the final PDF — all work with no connection. Ideal for basements and remote properties.
• Needs a connection: Live weather, UK EPC lookup, soil data, AI Polish / Image Analysis and cloud sync. These simply wait until you are back online — nothing is lost.
• Cloud Sync PRO : When you are signed in, surveys back up automatically and sync across your devices. Edits are merged field-by-field, with the most recent change winning, so working briefly offline on two devices won't clobber your data.
• Recovery: Sign in on a new device to restore every synced survey, including photos.

The core of your survey is the Room Analysis, where you document internal conditions, damp readings and visible issues room by room.

• Add rooms: Create an entry for each room surveyed (e.g. Living Room, Kitchen).
• Damp readings: Log moisture-meter readings (e.g. WME %, REL) for walls, floors or specific locations.
• Profile photos: Take a wide shot of the room for context in the report.
• Defect photos & notes: Add close-ups of damp patches, mould or condensation, with your observations.
• Damp types: Categorize the issue (rising damp, penetrating damp, condensation) to apply standard remediation advice, if enabled in Settings.

The External Analysis section documents the exterior condition of the property — often the source of internal damp.

• Elevations: Add each elevation (front, rear, left, right) to review the property systematically.
• Defects: Log common defects per elevation — cracked render, blocked gutters, defective DPCs.
• Photographs: Attach photos to each defect for clear visual evidence.
• AI Image Analysis: Free includes limited trial uses; Pro adds higher daily access and the option to connect your own provider key. Always review the output before using it.

Smart Build generates standard survey text from a few quick selections, so you don't type common observations from scratch.

• Standard text blocks: Select pre-written paragraphs covering common observations (condensation, rising damp, ventilation) and typical remedial advice, then insert them straight into your report fields.
• Locale-aware: Smart Build adjusts its fields and placeholder text to the region set in your Localization Profile.
• Always editable: Inserted text is a starting point — edit it to fit the property.

The app does the building-physics behind condensation for you, so you can show why a surface is at risk rather than just noting that it is damp.

• Enter your readings: Record air temperature, relative humidity and surface temperature for a location.
• Automatic dew point: The app calculates the dew-point temperature and compares it with the surface temperature to indicate condensation risk.
• Multiple readings: Capture several readings across a room or property to build a clear picture.
• Report & AI: The figures flow into your report and inform the AI executive summary, helping justify your conclusions.

You can enter values manually from your own hygrometer, or let the weather integration pre-fill ambient conditions.

Sketch accurate property layouts natively in the app — no external CAD software required. The plan editor works with real walls, rooms and openings, so lengths and areas are calculated for you rather than just drawn as a picture.

• Walls that snap: Draw walls with the wall tool — they snap to a grid, to each other's corners, and to common angles (0°/45°/90°), so your plan comes out square without fiddly manual alignment.
• Automatic room areas: Trace a room outline with the room tool and the app calculates its floor area automatically, in m² or ft² to match your Localization Profile.
• Real doors & windows: Place doors and windows directly onto a wall as proper openings — including door swing direction — rather than floating icons sitting on top of the drawing.
• Scale calibration: Draw a line between two points of a known real-world distance (e.g. a door width) and enter that distance — the whole plan recalculates to true scale, so the areas and lengths it shows are meaningful, not just illustrative.
• Damp markers & photo pins: Drop a damp/mould severity marker directly onto the plan, or place a pin that marks where one of your survey photos was taken, so readers can see exactly where each issue sits in the property.
• Multiple rooms & sections: Add rooms one at a time — each scan or template drops in beside the last, and you can grab the Move room tab to slide a whole section into place, composing a complete property plan room by room.
• Freehand & text: Use the pencil tool for freehand notes or sketches, and the text tool for labels, just as before.
• Automatic legend: A key of the symbols you've used (walls, doors, windows, severity markers, photo pins) is generated automatically and included in the saved plan image, so it appears in both the report preview and the exported PDF.

AR Room Scanning PRO : On a LiDAR-equipped iPhone or iPad running iOS 16 or later, open Draw Plan, tap AR scan in the top bar, name the room (e.g. Living Room), and slowly walk it. Apple's RoomPlan technology detects the walls, doors and windows, auto-straightens the result and labels it on the page for you to refine and add markers to. Scan several rooms and the plan scales to keep them all in view. On devices without LiDAR, or on Android, the AR option isn't shown and you draw manually.

Tap Save (the green checkmark) and the app attaches a sharper, higher-resolution image of your plan — legend included — to the final PDF. You can also export the plan on its own from the ⋮ menu — Export as PDF creates a one-off, shareable floor plan PDF without generating the full survey report.

For social and rented housing in England, Awaab's Law sets target timeframes for investigating and fixing reported hazards. The Compliance Timeline is an optional planning aid that shows indicative target dates against a survey, so a follow-up date is never left to memory. It ships pre-set to the commonly-cited Awaab's Law damp & mould targets.

• Turn it on once: Enable it under Settings → Profile → Compliance Timeline. When on, a clean timeline appears inside Survey Details, right below the dates; when off, it's hidden everywhere.
• Awaab's Law presets: Choose a preset — Awaab's Law damp & mould (investigate, written summary, begin repairs) or Awaab's Law emergency hazard (make safe) — then adjust the stages and day counts to your own policy. Lock them behind your PIN so field surveyors can't change them.
• Per-survey override: Surveyors can switch an individual survey to a different preset — for example escalate it to the emergency schedule — but can never change the day values, which are set only in Settings. An organisation can disallow these overrides entirely with the "Allow per-survey preset override" policy toggle, which is protected by the settings lock.
• Uses your existing dates: No double-dating — the timeline measures from a date you've already entered in Survey Details (date of instruction, survey or report). Pick which one, or enter a separate tenant-reported date if it differs.
• Stage due dates: Indicative target dates for each stage, colour-coded as on track, due soon or overdue, with the days remaining.
• Optional reminders: Toggle reminders to get local notifications as a stage's date approaches; they're cancelled automatically when a survey is completed or deleted, or you can hide the timeline for a survey with no reportable hazard.

Assess whether a wall, roof or floor build-up is at risk of interstitial condensation — moisture condensing inside the construction rather than on its surface — using the Glaser method from BS EN ISO 13788, with U-values to BS EN ISO 6946. Open it from the Survey Wizard dashboard: Condensation & U-value, next to Psychrometrics.

• Build the construction: Add as many constructions as the survey needs with the Wall / Roof / Floor quick-add buttons — each renders as its own analysis in the report. Add layers inside → outside from a library of 30 standard materials (bricks, blocks, insulations, boards, membranes) with design values from BS EN ISO 10456 / CIBSE Guide A, set each thickness, and reorder freely. Membranes such as VCLs and breather membranes carry their vapour resistance (sd) directly.
• Instant U-value: The thermal transmittance updates live as you edit, with a quality band from Passivhaus level through to the Part L limit and beyond, plus the total resistance and the f_Rsi surface temperature factor used for the UK mould criterion (≥ 0.75).
• 12-month Glaser assessment: The app runs all twelve months against your chosen BS 5250 humidity class and real climate data — tap Use property location and it resolves ERA5 monthly means for the property's own address or coordinates (with 61 built-in locations worldwide as the offline fallback), saved with the construction so reports keep working with no signal. The verdict: no risk, transient — dries out within the year, or accumulates — fails the annual moisture balance.
• Glaser diagram: Tap any month to see the saturation and actual vapour-pressure curves through the build-up, with condensation planes highlighted — the classic diagram, drawn for you.
• Into the report: Each construction marked "Include in report" renders as a Condensation Risk Analysis section — build-up table, U-value, verdict and the worst-month diagram — in both the report preview and the PDF.
• Surveyor comment: Add your own commentary per construction — dictate it hands-free and tap AI Polish to turn rough notes into professional wording — and it renders under the analysis in the report.

The Ventilation section lets you log every extractor fan you inspect — location, type, working or defective, and notes. Each fan now also takes an optional Part F Check that compares the measured extract rate against the indicative intermittent minimums in Approved Document F (England).

• Pick the room type: Kitchen (30 l/s), utility room (30 l/s), bathroom (15 l/s) or WC (6 l/s) — pre-selected from the fan's location where possible. Habitable rooms have no intermittent extract requirement, so the app shows the purge-ventilation guidance (openable area ≥ 1/20 of the floor area) instead.
• Enter the measured rate: An anemometer reading at the fan, or the fan's rated duty, in litres per second. Add the floor area and ceiling height and the app also shows the air changes per hour.
• Instant verdict: A clear meets / below result with report-ready wording — and when a fan falls short, the practical next step (increase fan duty, check for blocked ducting).
• Into the report: Enabled checks appear as a colour-coded line under the fan's row in the Extractor Fans table, in the preview and the PDF.

The rates are indicative screening figures from Approved Document F — always verify against the current edition, and local regulations outside England.

Score housing hazards with the statutory HHSRS formula, updated for the framework as amended by the HHSRS (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (in force 23 June 2026). Open HHSRS Scoring from the Survey Wizard dashboard — shown by default for UK profiles, and available to any region via Settings.

• Score only what's relevant: As in real practice, you add only the hazards you judge to be present and significantly worse than average — typically a handful per dwelling, never all 21. Quick-add buttons cover damp & mould, excess cold, fire and falls; the full 21-profile list sits behind "Other…".
• Likelihood slider, live scoring: Set the likelihood of a harmful occurrence over 12 months on a slider that snaps to the statutory 16-point "1 in N" scale, and enter the spread of harm across the Extreme / Severe / Serious / Moderate outcome classes (they must total 100% — a proportion bar, one-tap presets and a "Normalise to 100%" button make that quick). The hazard score, band and category update live as you adjust either one.
• Bands & categories: Scores band as Low (under 100), Medium (100–999) or High (1,000+); a score of 1,000 or more is a Category 1 hazard — the rating a local authority has a duty to act on.
• Searchable hazard picker: Find any of the 21 hazard profiles by typing, rather than scrolling the full list.
• Evidence-linked: Tag the rooms where each hazard presents so the score sits beside the photographs and observations that support it.
• Into the report: Each scored hazard renders with a colour-coded score/band/category pill, the likelihood and harm-outcome facts, evidence rooms and your assessor notes (dictate them hands-free, then AI Polish into professional wording) — plus a method note stating the statutory basis.

The app supports global energy ratings (UK EPC, Ireland BER, US HERS, Australia NABERS and more) and connects to the UK Government EPC API to pull property energy data into your surveys.

• Global standards: Switch the rating scheme in the "Energy Performance (EPC)" section — over 10 international schemes including Canada EnerGuide, NZ Healthy Homes, Singapore Green Mark and Mostadam. The PDF chart, colours and layout adjust to match.
• Pick ratings visually: Current and Potential ratings are chosen on a scale matched to the scheme — a colour-coded A–G bar for UK EPC and Irish BER, selectable pearls for Estidama, star rows for NABERS/NatHERS/Al Sa'fat/GSAS/GRIHA, level chips for Mostadam and Green Mark, a numeric gauge for HERS/EnerGuide, or a compliance toggle for NZ Healthy Homes — with a live preview, so the report and PDF always show exactly the same graphic.
• Fetch UK data: For UK properties, enter the full address and postcode, then tap Search GOV.UK API to retrieve data from the official registry.
• Report integration: Captured data (current rating, potential, floor area, expiry date) is saved to the survey and rendered as a formatted rating graph in the PDF.
• Recommendations box: Optionally display energy-efficiency recommendations in a dedicated block on the PDF.
• Hide the section: Don't need energy data? Turn off the EPC feature, or individual fields, in Settings → App Features.

Atmospheric conditions during a survey matter, because they affect damp readings and condensation.

In the Weather & Orientation section, the app uses the property address you enter, plus your OpenWeatherMap key, to pull the live temperature, humidity and weather description at that moment. Only the property address is used for weather. It also generates a small map showing nearby cloud cover and rainfall intensity.

You can override any value manually if you prefer your own hygrometer readings.

The Subsoil & Drainage section documents the ground around the property — geology, soil texture and drainage — which helps identify rising-damp pathways, high water tables and lateral moisture penetration.

• Address-driven lookup PRO : The module locates the site automatically from the property address you already entered in Survey Details — no separate postcode box to fill in twice. It prefers a detected postcode or zip and falls back to the full address; tap Fetch Soil Data to retrieve geological data from the official ISRIC SoilGrids global database. If it can't resolve a location, a clear prompt sends you back to Survey Details to complete the address.
• Interactive overlays PRO : View heatmaps of subsoil metrics on the map — clay %, sand %, silt %, pH, organic carbon, nitrogen and cation exchange capacity.
• Depth profiling: Choose depth layers (from 0–30 cm down to 100–200 cm) to see how the geology changes below foundation level.
• Texture & drainage: From the clay/sand/silt split, the app derives the USDA soil texture (e.g. Clay Loam) and estimated drainage characteristics.
• Nearest-data scan: In built-up areas where natural soil is covered, the app searches outward to find and use the nearest available soil data. If genuinely none is published nearby, it tells you clearly rather than failing silently.
• Report integration: If enabled, the PDF includes a subsoil metrics grid, your analysis, and a cropped map with its colour legend.

Breathable structures (lime, lath and plaster, timber frame) need different diagnostic parameters, which the app applies from the building age you select.

• Breathability focus: Selecting "Pre-1900" in Property Details makes the AI prioritise recommendations that respect traditional materials.
• Narrative adjustment: Standard advice shifts toward preservation and sympathetic materials.

A built-in database of common repair and maintenance costs helps you give clients budget guidance.

• Add costs: In Essential Costs, select from standard repairs (roof repairs, electrical upgrades, glazing replacement and more).
• Custom items: Add your own item with a description and estimated cost for anything not in the database.
• Report summary: Selected costs total automatically into a summary table in the report, so clients understand the property's potential liabilities.

Add verifiable date and time stamps to your site photos for a clear, dated record.

• Automatic overlay: Once enabled in Settings, the app overlays a localized date and time on your room, defect and psychrometric images.
• On-site evidence: The stamps show when the conditions were captured.
• Renders in the PDF: Timestamps appear directly on the exported report — no special software needed to view them.

When "Damp & Timber Survey" or "Homebuyer Report" isn't the right title, type your own.

On the Client Details screen of a new survey, enter a completely custom report title. The app saves it for reuse. To tidy the list, remove saved titles under Custom Report Titles in Settings.

Free includes a small trial allowance for AI Polish and Image Analysis. Pro adds higher daily access and lets you connect a free Gemini API key or your own OpenAI API key. You always review and edit AI output before it enters the report.

AI Polish: Type quick notes like "damp patch on ceiling corner, needs checking above, maybe roof leak", then tap the AI Polish button (the magic-wand icon). The app rewrites it into professional terminology: "Evidence of isolated moisture ingress was noted to the ceiling corner. Further investigation of the roof covering above is recommended to determine the source." Where relevant, the wording cites the standard or duty that applies in your region — for example BS 5250, the HHSRS hazard category, Approved Document F or Awaab's Law.

AI Image Analysis: Add a defect photo and ask the AI to analyse it. It suggests a professional description of the visible dampness, cracking or timber defect, and records structured evidence:

• Detected defect indicators: visual tags such as tide marks, mould growth, efflorescence, staining or spalling — shown as chips you can toggle on or off.
• Moisture-meter readings: if an instrument is visible in the photo, the AI reads the value and unit so you can cite it.

These appear in a Supporting evidence block in the report, in your chosen report font and colours. You can hide individual items, and the surveyor-only confidence score is never shown to your client.

For Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar you can generate an Arabic translation of the AI executive summary; for India, a Hindi one. It's designed for reports going to a client or authority who reads that language first.

• Where to find it: once your executive summary is written, a Generate Arabic/Hindi summary button appears alongside it for the regions above — it's hidden entirely elsewhere.
• Renders properly: the translation displays right-to-left for Arabic in the on-screen report, and is embedded into the PDF alongside the original English summary.
• Same AI allowance: generating a translation counts against the limited Free allowance or Pro daily allowance. Pro users can also connect a Gemini or OpenAI API key, subject to that provider's limits.

Capture observations hands-free. Tap the microphone on an observation field and speak — your words are transcribed live as you talk, so you can keep your eyes on the property instead of the keyboard.

• Live transcription: text appears as you speak and is appended to what's already in the field — it never overwrites existing notes.
• Where: in the observation fields throughout the survey, for both internal rooms and external elevations.
• On-device speech: dictation uses your device's built-in speech recognition. Audio is used only for live transcription — it is not stored or shared.
• iOS & Android: works on both; you'll be asked for microphone permission the first time.

Open Settings → Standards & Regulations for a clear, searchable reference of the standards and statutory duties that apply in your selected region.

• Region-aware: for the UK this includes the HHSRS, Awaab's Law, BS 5250, BS 8102 and Approved Document F; other regions show their equivalent moisture and housing references.
• Grouped & expandable: standards are grouped by category, each with a plain-English description, the key clauses, and a "Read the source" link to the official document.
• Always current: the dataset updates over the air, so new references appear without an app update.
• Light & dark: fully readable in both themes.

The same standards underpin the citations the AI adds to your report wording, so what you read here is exactly what supports your narrative.

Settings is your control centre for how the app and your reports look and behave.

• Profile & company: Your name, company, address, website and contact details — used to brand every report.
• Logos & signatures: Upload a company logo for the cover and headers, and an image of your signature, or draw it on the digital signpad PRO . See Signatures & sign-off.
• Currency & temperature: Report currency defaults automatically from your selected region (12 supported currencies) — override it manually here if you'd rather fix one. Currencies whose symbols the PDF can't render (AED, SAR, QAR, INR) show as their ISO code instead, so screen and PDF always match. Also choose your temperature unit (°C or °F; defaults to °C).
• Standard items: Pre-populated phrase, material and defect lists keep reports consistent. These are not currently editable.
• Memberships: Toggle on professional memberships (PCA, CIOB, RICS) to show their logos in the report footer.
• Compliance Timeline: In the Profile tab, turn on the indicative Awaab's Law timeline and pick or edit its stage targets. See Compliance Timeline (indicative).
• Lock settings PRO : Secure your profile, logos, API keys and Compliance Timeline schedule behind a PIN to prevent accidental changes.
• Remove app branding PRO : Remove the "Generated by DampApp Pro" watermark for a fully white-label PDF.

Make your reports your own — fully offline — from the Settings tab.

• Typography: Choose from several fonts (Classic, Typewriter, Clean, Elegant, Balanced), applied across the whole document, even with no connection.
• Theme colours: Pick a curated accent colour, or enter your exact brand hex code, applied to section headers and borders.
• Cover layout: Switch between the shaded "Standard Header" and the ink-saving "Minimalistic Header".
• Hide narrative sections: Deselect sections you don't need for a job (e.g. Weather, Floor Plan, Client Instructions) from "Visible Narrative Sections" — they disappear from the wizard and the PDF.

Every surveyor has their own phrasing for disclaimers, company introductions and methodologies.

In Report Settings (under the main Settings tab) you can pre-write or override the default boilerplate used in every new survey, including:

• Company history / About us
• Legal disclaimers
• Technical definitions
• Default starting text for sections such as Structural Timber or Ventilation.

PRO Tip: Pro users can use the Smart Build button within these settings to have the AI draft standard disclaimers or an About-us section in seconds.

Finish reports with a professional, accountable sign-off.

• Add your signature: Upload an image of your signature, or draw it on the digital signpad PRO in Settings.
• Surveyor sign-off: The signature and your details appear in the report's sign-off block.
• Independent-surveyor disclosure: Where relevant, include an independent-surveyor statement for full transparency with lenders and clients.

When you generate a PDF or export survey data, the app opens your device's native Share Sheet.

• Save to cloud or device: Store the report in Files, iCloud, Google Drive or a local folder.
• Print or send: Print to a wireless printer, or pass the file to any app on your device.

Tap Share in the app and choose your destination when the Share Sheet appears. To email reports straight from the app under your own address, see Email and SMTP configuration.

Knowing where your data is stored helps you avoid losing work:

• Local storage: Without a subscription, surveys are stored only on your device. If you delete the app, those surveys are permanently lost.
• Cloud Sync PRO : Surveys sync securely to the cloud. You can reinstall or switch devices and log back in to recover them.
• Cancelling PRO : If you cancel, you don't lose your data — it reverts to local storage on your device.
• Deleting your account: The Delete Account option (in-app or on this website) permanently wipes your login and purges all synced data from our servers. This is irreversible.

Your data isn't trapped on your phone. From the Export Data page on this website you can log into your DampApp Pro cloud account on a computer.

From there you can view your synced surveys and download the raw JSON — useful for backups, your own record-keeping, a CRM or custom integrations. (Your phone still produces the formatted PDF reports.)

• Cloud dashboard PRO : Logging in to view and back up cloud data requires an active subscription.
• Account deletion: Current or former subscribers can permanently delete their account and data from the website.

For backups or transferring between devices, DampApp Pro supports full JSON import and export.

• Exporting: Export a single survey or your whole database to a .json file — ideal for archiving on your computer.
• Importing: Import a previously exported file with the Import JSON Survey button (cloud-with-up-arrow) on the home screen.
• Selective import: Choose to import just the survey data, just your company profile, or both — handy for moving your setup to a new device without overwriting current surveys.
• Photos: Without Cloud Sync, photos aren't included in JSON exports (device file-size limits). With an active Cloud Sync subscription, the export stores secure links to your cloud images, so photos are restored on import.

As your library grows, these tools help you find and manage past reports.

• Search: Filter surveys on the home screen by client name, property address or reference number.
• Time filter: A dropdown beside the search bar filters by timeframe (e.g. past 30 days, past year).
• Single delete: Open a survey and tap the trash icon; a prompt confirms before proceeding.
• Bulk delete: The red trash icon by your survey count deletes everything older than a chosen timeframe.
• Multi-select: Tap the checkbox by the count to select several surveys and delete them together.

Unfinished surveys are easy to lose track of. DampApp Pro shows how long each draft has been sitting unfinished, so nothing slips through the cracks.

• Age badges: Each draft on the home screen shows a small badge — Fresh, Aging or Stale — based on how many days it's been since you started it.
• At-a-glance summary: A chip above your survey list totals how many drafts fall into each band, so you can gauge backlog risk without opening every survey.
• Sort oldest-first: Use the sort control to bring your longest-outstanding drafts to the top of the list.
• Optional reminders: If enabled, the app can send a local notification when a draft crosses into the Aging or Stale band — nothing is sent over the network, and reminders are cancelled automatically once you complete or delete the survey.

Age is measured from when you first created the survey. Surveys created before this update use their instruction or survey date instead, since a creation date wasn't recorded at the time.

When you first use the app you'll be asked once whether you'd like to contribute anonymised insights that power industry benchmarking. It is an explicit opt-in choice, entirely optional, and you can change your answer at any time under Settings → Data & Privacy.

• Finding record: the recognised damp type, Low/Medium/High severity, approved indicator tags, a meter-reading flag and your selected country/market.
• Discarded: names, addresses, client details, photographs and survey prose are not stored in the finding record. Older app versions may send an address prefix, which the service ignores.
• Abuse prevention: a pseudonymous submission counter is retained for up to three days; it is not included in the published dataset.
• Opt out any time: switch the toggle off and nothing further is sent.

De-identified trends are published on prosurvey.app only after the overall disclosure threshold is met. Country/market rows must meet that threshold independently.

The AI tools (AI Polish and AI Image Analysis) connect to a language model using your own API key. DampApp Pro supports both Google Gemini and OpenAI — this article covers Gemini.

What is it? An API key is a secure credential that lets DampApp Pro talk to Gemini on your behalf.

Why your own key? Bringing your own key keeps the base app affordable — you pay Google only for what you use, directly.

Free tier: Gemini's free tier is generous and suits most users; you can sign up without adding billing. The main limit is rate limiting (many requests in one minute), which standard survey use rarely hits.

Where to get it:

1. Go to Google AI Studio.
2. Sign in with your Google account.
3. Click Create API key, copy the string, and paste it into the "AI API Key" field in Settings.

Prefer OpenAI's models to Google Gemini? You can provide an OpenAI API key instead.

How to set it up:

1. Create an account: Go to platform.openai.com and sign in.
2. Set up billing: Under Settings > Billing, add a payment method and load an initial balance.
3. Generate the key: Under API Keys, click "Create new secret key", name it, and copy the sk-proj-… string immediately. Generate the key after loading billing — a key created with an empty balance can throw rate-limit errors; if so, delete it and create a new one.
4. Add to app: In Settings, select "OpenAI" as your provider and paste the key. Leave the model on "Automatic" to use the newest available GPT mini model.

To pull live weather data, the app uses an API key from OpenWeatherMap.

Primary key — One Call API 3.0: Subscribe to the One Call API 3.0 for temperature, humidity and weather description. The first 1,000 calls per day are free. A payment card is required, but you're only charged above the free tier — practically impossible for normal survey use. Set your daily limit to 1,000 in the dashboard to guarantee no charges.

Optional — Weather Maps 2.0: The live rain and cloud map overlays need a Weather Maps 2.0 subscription, a paid add-on with no free tier. Without it, the text weather data (temp, humidity) still works via the 3.0 API.

Where to get it:

1. Sign up at openweathermap.org/api.
2. Subscribe to One Call API 3.0, generate a key under "API keys", and paste it into Settings.
3. (Optional) Add Weather Maps 2.0 for the visual overlays.

SMTP is the "engine" that sends report emails from the app under your own work address, so they reach clients straight from you.

You'll need a few details from your email provider (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, your web host):

• SMTP host: the server address (e.g. smtp.gmail.com, smtp.office365.com).
• Port: usually 465 or 587.
• Username: your full email address.
• Password: your email password — or an "App Password" if you use two-factor authentication.

Gmail & Microsoft users: with two-factor authentication, generate an App Password rather than using your normal login password.

• Create a Gmail App Password
• Create a Microsoft App Password

Enter these in the Email Configuration section of Settings. Once connected, finished surveys can be emailed to clients natively from the app.

A quick checklist for the issues we're asked about most:

• AI features won't run: Confirm your AI API key is pasted correctly in Settings and hasn't hit a per-minute rate limit — wait a moment and retry. If you use OpenAI, make sure you've loaded pre-paid credits (a key with an empty balance fails). See AI API keys and OpenAI API keys.
• Weather not loading: Check your OpenWeatherMap One Call 3.0 key and that the property address is set. The live map overlays additionally need the Maps 2.0 add-on.
• No rain on the radar: RainViewer only shows actual precipitation — a clear sky shows nothing, which is correct.
• Sign-in or sync problems: Check your connection and make sure you're on the latest app version (older builds can be affected by security upgrades). Signing out and back in refreshes your session.
• Photos missing after import: Photos are only included in JSON exports when Cloud Sync is active. See Exporting & importing JSON data.
• Soil data not found: Some built-up or remote locations have no published soil data nearby; the app says so explicitly rather than failing.

Still stuck? Use Submit Feedback in the app (it attaches diagnostics) or contact support.

Found a bug, have a feature request, or need a hand? Contact us from inside the app.

• Go to Settings → Help & Legal.
• Tap Submit Feedback / Report a Bug.
• Write your message and optionally use the paperclip to attach a screenshot or PDF (up to 5 MB).
• Your device OS and app version are sent securely with the message, so we can help quickly.

You can also open a support ticket from this website.