A bit of damp, some lino, some tiles, some advice please?

[thiambal]

I have a late victorian terraced house with a kitchen at the rear of the house in original extension (the bit of the house sticking out the back that is not as wide at the main house) at the rear of the property.

When we moved in there was a fresh self leveling screed laid on the kitchen floor and new kitchen installed. We have have lino laid for about six months and now scattered damp patches have appeared on the screed. They are not wet but feel clammy and dry out when left exposed for 24 hours.

I believe there is concrete below the screed but I have no idea how thick and presummably without a DPM. The kitchen floor is six inches lower than the boards in the main house - so I guess is is possible that there was orginally an earth floor that has just has a bit concrete poured on top - or the room has boards which have been filled in.

An option of course is to dig up the whole floor and re-lay with DPM but this mean removing the fitted kitchen at great expense. As the screed had been down for some months when we moved in with no sign of damp I imagine the lino is just stopping the floor from breathing. There is no sign at the moment of rising damp in the walls - although they have been recently skim plastered and painted.

So the questions are these:

1. Do you think we will get away with not digging the whole lot up?

2. What sort of breathable surface could we put down - would quarry tiles be suitable. - Or could you recommend another - perhaps thinner alternative as the floor is currently only a few mm below door step of exterior door.

3. If we were to lay quarry tiles would we be best to use tile adhesive or some other method if laying onto the existing self leveling screed.

 

[Caitlyn]

Hi

OUr kitchen floor is pretty similar, though it is original. We had a screed base with boards over but when we took them up we had damp patches and dry rot. What we did was pour down fungus killer, exceedingly poisonous so if you do it be very careful, then when that was dry we painted the floor with waterproof sealer, the stuff you use for outside walls to stop penetrating damp, then we put down a new floor. It is a cheat and the ideal thing would be to dig up your floor and put in a DPM. That being said it has been incredibly successful and though we may need to put down a DPM eventually it's allowed us to save up for that work to be done at a much much later date.

I would imagine that your actualy walls have a DPC so shouldn't be at risk of rising damp, but you never can tell what has been done in these old houses.

Painting the floor with sealant is the absolute cheapest way to keep the damp out. It's probably not the ideal solution, but as I said it has worked for the past 7 years without any hitches.

 

[NT]

Once youve got concrete down I doubt sealing it will make things any worse. That would give it a dpc. As for whether youll get away with it, maybe ask someone with crystal balls.

Painting it with something very tough might be an option, industrial grade resin floor coating etc. Its possible to get these coatings done in a thin layer with bits of stone chip in so its looks a bit like terrazzo.


NT

 

[thiambal]

The builder who lives two doors down imforms me that the kitchens have never had floor borads and so I must have a layer of concrete of top of the original earth floor.

Tempted to have the concrete up, put some limecrete screed down and lay some quarry tiles.

Perhaps exploratory holes need to be dug to see what is underneath - I know for a fact that somwhere underneath is a lead water pipe which I would quite like to replace.