Hi all

Thought I would provide an update to say how the problems we had are pretty much solved now - touch wood.

To cut a long story short our 1930s Victorian Semi had damp smells in our house plus we had lots of coughs, colds, sore throats which I felt were related to the predicament but could never prove it. Carpets were going rotten in a few places downstairs and the damp meter readings went off the scale in all kinds of odd places around the house but never higher than a metre or so from ground level. We also had water appearing at the rear of the house on the mouldy rubble/soil mix that sat under our suspended timber floor. This got worse when it rained but we didn't know if this was the water table or a leaky drain.

Any way, after a lot of remedial work there are now no damp smells (well almost - very very rarely!) and everything seems fine.

Here is the list of things that I had to do....

I had a new chemical Damp Proof course installed at skirting board level - by professionals who were reasonably low cost (£400 approx) and competent. They also did the outer walls too including double drilling where needed. This was in order to get a guarantee in case we sell up.

Installed a second DPC (chemical again) a couple of bricks lower from were the joists were resting. I did this myself - pretty easy, with some DPC cream from ebay and followed the instructions!

Replastered to 1.5m or so from the floor level - using SBR additive to prevent any further damp getting through in the future. Skimmed the rest of the walls. Re-painted.

Removed and replaced all the downstairs floorboards as many of them were showing signs of decay.

Replaced all skirting boards - many were rotten (yellow stuff growing!) and some had had woodworm in the past.

Removed a couple of joists that were rotten and replaced them.

Installed new damp proof membranes under all the joists where they rested on brickwork. The old bitumen (or whatever it was) was crumbling and non-existent in places.

Treated all other joists with a wood treatment to prevent rot and woodworm.

Installed 3 new airbricks. The back of the house has air bricks every 1m ish now. Every 1.6m everywhere else.

Removed what was several tonnes of mouldy rubble and soil under the house, disinfected with a mild bleach solution, then applied plastic dpm sheets over the entire sub floor and put a few half bricks around the edges to weight it down.

I also applied about 4inch of concrete over the top of the plastic sheets at the rear of the house. The weight of concrete was similar to the amount of rubble I removed.

Had the main drain at the side (rear) of the house replaced - insurance paid for some of that.

Replaced all the old lead gas pipes under the floor. Checked for no leaks in the central heating pipes. Just because everything was up!

Put high quality laminate flooring down throughout (with a water resistant layers top and bottom and the core) - throwing all of the carpets and underlay away as this was mouldy in places. And sealed the laminate to the edges (skirting board).

Installed an external wall mounted extractor fan that I've ducted into the subfloor void at the rear of the house. This is on a timer switch and comes on for a few hours during the day. Thinking here was to aid the drying out process and remove what might remain of any smell and damp. Fresh air is more readily drawn in through the air vents as the extractor sucks stale air out. I'll probablly remove this and fit another air brick in its place in a month or twos time.


So all in all a lot of hard work and money. Much of it done on my own but had help where my skills simply weren't up to it. It took about 12 to 15 weekends Sat and Sun of my time and cost a total of about £10k all in all (much of it at mates rates too). Could have done it quicker and for cheaper but it was the only way at the time.



Hope this helps someone.

N

Just to make some sense, here is a link to the original thread.



damp-and-timber-floor-what-should-i-do-t32161.html