Perfect house but wet basement???

Fire_Fox

Ask the vendors if they or any other prospective buyers have ever paid an independent professional to report on the water ingress in the cellar. The decide if you want to proceed with your own surveys or walk away.

G_M

Look - midguided/incomplete advice being given.

First, you need to understand what this basement has been used for. It's a coal store. If you check the pavement outside I'm sure you'll find a manhole cover that leads down to your 'square hole' in the basement wall. 50 years ago, the coalman would come round with his horse and cart and empty sacks of coal down this shoot in the pavement, to be stored in the basement.

So basically it was never designed to be 100% dry, and being underground, will inevitably be damp.

Next you need to decide what YOU want to use this basement for. If you want to use it as living accomodation (a playroom, gym, study, music room whatever) then it will need lots of work. It will need 'tanking'. The floor and walls will need to be completely damp-proofed, since they are adjascent to damp earth! I'm no expert, but £5 - 10K?

However, if you will only use it for storage (bearing in mind you can't store stuff that will suffer from damp - wine OK for example, but not soft furnishings!), then there's no problem.

Finally, yes, as suggested, IF there is structural timber down there, which is damp, then the timber will be rotting and that could be serious. But I would be very surprised if there IS structural timber there. These kinds of properties have been around for 100 years and were not built by idiots who put structural timber underground!

bigmock

thank you very much for youre reply yes we will only use it for storing wine, and the most we want to do is out an exercise bike down there and maybe an easel so i can paint down there i do not want a cinema or anything in there!

davidlp

with regards to 'tanking'.... its a leasehold flat so would that be a problem??

thanks


(Ill have a cinema down there:cool:)

G_M

I suspect tanking would require the freeholder's consent.

A cinema? Then I guess you don't want to sit on damp chairs, in a damp environment, so will need to tank it.

But if it's just (wine) storage, why bother? Fine as it is.

Fire_Fox

bigmock wrote: »

thank you very much for youre reply yes we will only use it for storing wine, and the most we want to do is out an exercise bike down there and maybe an easel so i can paint down there i do not want a cinema or anything in there!

davidlp wrote: »

with regards to 'tanking'.... its a leasehold flat so would that be a problem??

thanks

You really don't want to exercise or paint in a wet cellar, there is likely to be mould spores! :eek: You need to read the long lease to see who is responsible for the cellar and foundations, find out from the leaseholder if the water ingress has been reported to the freeholder, if he has investigated and intends to take any action.

martinsurrey

G_M wrote: »

Look - midguided/incomplete advice being given.

First, you need to understand what this basement has been used for. It's a coal store. If you check the pavement outside I'm sure you'll find a manhole cover that leads down to your 'square hole' in the basement wall. 50 years ago, the coalman would come round with his horse and cart and empty sacks of coal down this shoot in the pavement, to be stored in the basement.

So basically it was never designed to be 100% dry, and being underground, will inevitably be damp.

....

These kinds of properties have been around for 100 years and were not built by idiots who put structural timber underground!

I agree with a lot of what you said, but there is an important point.

The basements that did house coal until recently had several tonnes of dry coal in them, these absorbed a lot of the moisture in the basements, and then the coal was removed and burned, keeping the overall level of moisture down there low.

Removing the coal, WITHOUT removing the sources of moisture increases the ambient moister level significantly. This can lead to a lot of problems in areas that for most of the buildings history were fine.

Your right, these weren’t built by idiots, but they intended these to be full with coal, not sitting empty.

A full structural survey is the only way to be sure (and done by someone who knows a good deal about basements).