Wainscotting to manage damp?

[worms]

All the best nursing homes now have wi-fi, so I'll add my tuppence-worth... I would tend towards the "simplest is best" approach and just rout out a series of chamfers in the top rail so that there are air gaps between the rail and the wall.

 

[Cubist]

Hi Worms et al,

Sorry, but it took me so long to re-read all the contributions to this thread that I've forgotten what it was about..... several times!

Now, what did I come in here for......

 

[malcolm]

My place had panelling to hide the damp. The ground level outside beside the fireplace was maybe 2 feet higher than inside so the wall was quite wet. It kind of worked but the implementation was very poor. Wood was touching the wet stuff and the floor which had become wet and everything was painted in waterproof paint so the wood didn't dry out. I think this was done in 1979 and I removed it in 2013.







I've changed it. There is now a covered trench outside which sorts out the water. Inside I've added a stud wall with insulation. And gypsum and plasterboard. I've vented the gap to the roof space to keep everything dry. I think my timber panelling might have worked in the shorter term had it been implemented better. But I don't like soaking wet walls.

 

[worms]

Malcolm, your pics reminded me that 30 years ago we suffered at the hands of Rentokil, who came in as a mortgage condition, to sort out the damp in our kitchen wall. They did the usual work of stripping, replacing the battens with pressure treated timber, installing new plasterboard to wainscotting height and drilling lots of holes in the rubble wall to inject their magic formula. In many respects that work does the same job as wainscotting in providing a solution that covers up the damp wall and lasts for long enough for most residents, without actually sorting the real issue - which in our case is simply a cold outside wall, with cold damp air settling at the bottom of the unvented gap. I've recently had cause to remove the skirting and the bottom few inches of the gyproc again and confirmed that during a period of prolonged heavy rain, the base of the wall remained dry - even though some of it is below ground level and all of it is well below their line of holes!

But the point of this ramble is that the cold air will settle at the bottom of the wall behind the interior wall covering, whether it is wainscorring or plasterboard, even with good ventilation out of the top.

 

[88v8]

...the cold air will settle at the bottom of the wall behind the interior wall covering, whether it is wainscorring or plasterboard, even with good ventilation out of the top.

Good point.
Needs vents of some sort at top and bottom.

Ivor