Open blocked air vents to cure damp?

Mander

I have an increasing damp issue, and I'm researching ways to fix it. With the current freezing weather, the windows and doors in our house are constantly covered with condensation and there is mold growing on the ground floor door thresholds and in the corner of the landing by the front door.

Some background info:

Our house is a traditional brick semi built in 1959 or 1960. The floor downstairs is the original brown thermoplatic tiles, laid on the concrete slab. At present it is very cold, but we are getting ready to have laminate flooring put down, which will hopefully improve that.

Part of our problem may be that the ground floor is underheated, I think. Currently, there is a non-functional gas fire in the ground floor living room and radiators everywhere else. We hope to be able to install another radiator in the living room and possibly replace the fire with an electric one, but that will have to wait until next year. At the moment it is difficult to keep the living room warm. There are two small radiators downstairs in the kitchen and hallway, on walls which are shared with the living room.

There are stadium vents (I think that's what they are called--the rectangular things with grilles on them) in every room, but most of them have been blocked off. You can see globs of what appears to be silicone sealant in the grilles outside.

Questions:

Can/should we attempt to open up the vents downstairs? The ones that are open upstairs are drafty and let in a lot of cold air, but there is also less condensation in those rooms.

If we do open the vents, is there some kind of cover we can put on the vents to cut down on drafts without blocking air flow?

Would adding those foil reflector gizmos to the radiators downstairs be of any use in increasing the ambient temperature of the ground floor?

Any other ideas for reducing damp?

illzlee

yes you should open up the vents, we have a similar aged house with similar vents. Wilkinsons do white plastic vent covers which can be opened or closed as you see fit.

sounds like the condensation is excessive, even for a cold ground floor.
boil a lot of foods? got a tumbler on with no external feed pipe? sounds like too much moisture in the air to me.

Ephemera

To add to illzlee's post -
Open your windows on the merest hint of a dry, warmish day.
Get a dehumidifier, they work wonders but do cost money to run. You can use the water on your plants! Run it in a damp bedroom in the day, and in the most damp downstairs room at night. That way you will keep it working - and turn it off when you open a window or you will be trying to dehumidify the whole world! ;0)

richardc1983

Yeh I would get a dehumidifer, because they are drying the air they also let a little bit of warm dry air out the otherside because it chills the air to get the air below dew point which will then condense on the cold coil inside the unit, the air is then passed through a warm coil to warm it back up.

hewhoisnotintheknow

just leave a window open a little bit, you need to get circulation going through the house

Mander

I guess our main problem with contributing to damp is probably drying clothes indoors. It has been far too cold and rainy here lately to dry things on the line outside and we don't have a tumble dryer. I always run the spin cycle twice to try and get extra water out of the clothes but I'm sure that it isn't helping.

Any advice on how to open the vents? In having a closer look it seems that some of them only exist on the outside of the house. Does this mean that the previous owner blocked them off by plastering, or do they serve some other purpose?