DaveG
Member
- Messages
- 101
- Location
- Pembrokeshire
WARNING - Long post!
A few of you regulars will already know about my current project of pulling up a concrete floor in one of our front rooms as I’ve referred to this in several posts already.
A brief background to bring you up to speed:
Long before my moving in back in the summer, the house had all of its suspended floors removed, plastic sheet DPCs laid and all filled in with concrete. Walls almost everywhere were also concrete slurried and gypsum plastered to around 1.5m high and all this has resulted in some damp areas, particularly at the front of the house.
The worst room for signs and smells of damp I’ve started on first as conveniently it’s the smallest and most easily closed away from living arrangements in the rest of the house.
The walls here, have all been hacked back to stone on the bottom half while the original lime plaster higher up has been left as is and I’m halfway through pulling up the concrete floor.
There’s no doubt in my mind this has all been necessary. Lower portions of the stone wall were visibly wet during removal of the cement slurry/gypsum and pulling up the floor has shown any timber in the walls at ground level to have all but disintegrated - A clear sign that ground moisture was being pushed up into the walls, so it feels like good riddance.
Now on to my dilemma.
Since starting this room I’ve been very keen to return to a suspended floor as it was originally and as a bit of a test to possibly repeat in the other much larger front room, however I’m beginning to wonder if having a suspended floor is even an option now due to limited opportunities to properly ventilate it.
In the floor plan below, the room I’m currently working on is the front right hand side. Directly behind it is the dining room which I’ve now confirmed also has a filled in concrete floor. Behind the dining room is a modern kitchen extension (concrete floor) and directly behind that is the boundary wall. The extension is actually built into this wall.
Although the house is detached, its sits up above some shop units to the right hand side where the tops of their metal roofs sit just above my floor levels.
The central hallway is original quarry tiles on what I presume is a limecrete base.
So this room I’m working on is hemmed in on all sides with solid floors and no way to properly cross ventilate that I can see.
The front wall to this room also only has a single (original) subfloor vent.
So in summary I think my 2 options are:
1. Try and persist with what I think will be a less than ideal ventilated subfloor. In theory I could add a second inlet vent on the front but as stated already its stone so would involve some heavy cutting and interfering with the building fabric.
For proper cross flow from front to back, my only option would be cutting a small chamber in the dining room floor along the dividing wall and bringing cooler subfloor air into that room up through floor vents. The room I’m digging up does have a recently opened fireplace on the RH side but it seems like there would be a risk of “stale corners” on the opposite side of the room.
Option 2. Look at laying a solid base back down with a base of insulation but I don’t as yet fully understand the best options in this area to ensure a proper vapour barrier that will maintain dry walls.
My other concern with option 1 is way in the future, what might a surveyor say if selling up? Ultimately though I want to do what’s best for the house.
What would you do?
A few of you regulars will already know about my current project of pulling up a concrete floor in one of our front rooms as I’ve referred to this in several posts already.
A brief background to bring you up to speed:
Long before my moving in back in the summer, the house had all of its suspended floors removed, plastic sheet DPCs laid and all filled in with concrete. Walls almost everywhere were also concrete slurried and gypsum plastered to around 1.5m high and all this has resulted in some damp areas, particularly at the front of the house.
The worst room for signs and smells of damp I’ve started on first as conveniently it’s the smallest and most easily closed away from living arrangements in the rest of the house.
The walls here, have all been hacked back to stone on the bottom half while the original lime plaster higher up has been left as is and I’m halfway through pulling up the concrete floor.
There’s no doubt in my mind this has all been necessary. Lower portions of the stone wall were visibly wet during removal of the cement slurry/gypsum and pulling up the floor has shown any timber in the walls at ground level to have all but disintegrated - A clear sign that ground moisture was being pushed up into the walls, so it feels like good riddance.
Now on to my dilemma.
Since starting this room I’ve been very keen to return to a suspended floor as it was originally and as a bit of a test to possibly repeat in the other much larger front room, however I’m beginning to wonder if having a suspended floor is even an option now due to limited opportunities to properly ventilate it.
In the floor plan below, the room I’m currently working on is the front right hand side. Directly behind it is the dining room which I’ve now confirmed also has a filled in concrete floor. Behind the dining room is a modern kitchen extension (concrete floor) and directly behind that is the boundary wall. The extension is actually built into this wall.
Although the house is detached, its sits up above some shop units to the right hand side where the tops of their metal roofs sit just above my floor levels.
The central hallway is original quarry tiles on what I presume is a limecrete base.
So this room I’m working on is hemmed in on all sides with solid floors and no way to properly cross ventilate that I can see.
The front wall to this room also only has a single (original) subfloor vent.
So in summary I think my 2 options are:
1. Try and persist with what I think will be a less than ideal ventilated subfloor. In theory I could add a second inlet vent on the front but as stated already its stone so would involve some heavy cutting and interfering with the building fabric.
For proper cross flow from front to back, my only option would be cutting a small chamber in the dining room floor along the dividing wall and bringing cooler subfloor air into that room up through floor vents. The room I’m digging up does have a recently opened fireplace on the RH side but it seems like there would be a risk of “stale corners” on the opposite side of the room.
Option 2. Look at laying a solid base back down with a base of insulation but I don’t as yet fully understand the best options in this area to ensure a proper vapour barrier that will maintain dry walls.
My other concern with option 1 is way in the future, what might a surveyor say if selling up? Ultimately though I want to do what’s best for the house.
What would you do?
