Cellar: worst case scenario is in terms of cost of flooding?

adrian66

Morning Everyone


There’s a bit of context here so you know where far I am, please bear with! Questions at the bottom


Me and my wife are first time buyers, we’ve come across a house we like but it comes with a basement.


Normally I would love a bit of space to tinker/play music/store things but it’s not particularly well decked out. It’s 2 bay, bare brick (painted white a few years ago by the looks of it), about a 150 sq ft, but only 5 feet from floor to ceiling. (My wife and I are both 6 foot). We are not too worried about excavating/converting at the moment to make it more usable as we won’t have that kind of money.


I am mainly concerned about damp, flooding, and the effect this could have on selling the house in future.


I researched what to look out for with cellars prior to seeing the house for the first time: the smell of damp (down there but the smell rising to the ground floor as well), signs of damp on the walls (efflorescence), mould, water marks etc. As I said previously, the brickwork in the cellar has previously been painted white (perhaps to brighten the area up a bit but also perhaps to cover up any signs of damp rather conveniently!) Furthermore parts of the ground and 1st floor have also been freshly painted so we could only smell fresh paint when walking around the property. Maybe I’m being paranoid here…


The pointing and brickwork seemed fine around the front, back and right side of the cellar room (on the unattached side as it were) but I will need to double check that next time I visit. The floor had a damp feel (not sure what the material was on the floor but it was soily/dusty/crumbly and it felt like there was moisture in the air.


We asked the estate agent to find out if it had been previously tanked, the previous owner says it hasn’t.


I am wondering what the worst case scenario is in terms of flooding etc. ?


How much might this kind of thing cost to fix (worst case scenario)?



We know the house is solid and won’t fall down around our ears - we’re not expecting the apocolypse!) Are we talking about digging around the three sides of the house down several feet and putting in a membrane/injecting the walls etc? Is this a common enough occurrence? Is a little bit of water ingress something to be ignored?



Many thanks for taking the time to read this, any replies much much appreciated.

Seanymph

I take it this is an old house?

I had a very old house, and the first winter was horrified to find the cellars flooded to a depth of about 6 - 8 inches.

after a lot of insurance content and investigations I learnt that they did that annually...

we could pump them out, put dehumidifiers in them, but then they flooded again.

they were pretty much designed to stand fine in the water. I moved all the electrics upstairs (having learnt that balancing down a ladder in the dark waving a torch and then standing in water to reset trips was unnerving...

I could have tanked them out, at inordinate cost, or I could live with it. so we lived with it. The house didn't suffer from it, but I could never block up the open vents and windows into the cellar.

Consequently wind used to howl up through the floor boards, literally - it would lift your skirt if you stood in the kitchen! So I had to insulate and then put membrane and boards in the ceiling of the cellar to isolate it from the house and stop the drafts.

I live in a new house now

Doozergirl

Cellars are absolutely designed to be damp and even to flood. May houses have cellars which will flood annually as the water table rises in winter. It will either drop of its own accord or you can pump it out - this does not make it a problem property.

For me, I believe that cellars are best left to their own devices. Cellars are only tanked if they are to be used as a habitable room and even then, there is still a high likelihood of damp occurring. The ground is wet, the ground will always be wet - nothing will change that. A small hole in any damp proofing to try and tank it will cause damp and the efforts to plug it don't always work.

The key is to have lots of ventilation in the form of air bricks under the house - this causes free movement of air stops damp from staying inside the space and causing rot to the joists. You can insulate the ceiling of it to keep the house warm.

And then a damp proof membrane that works - whether it's an original slate one or a subsequent injection. If the old one works - no need to inject chemicals.

As a company, we will not convert cellars. I genuinely believe that they are best left the way they were designed. No need to worry about it; have your surveyor look at it. The benefit of a cellar is that your surveyor can really see how the house is built and what kind of condition it is in.

27col

Having a cellar that is unusable seems to be pretty pointless.

adrian66

Hi all,

Thanks for your comments, sorry its been a while responding, things have moved on a bit It is a Victorian house

What you've all said has been very fair.

In the end, I went round to the neighbours to ask about their cellars - the houses appear to be identical. Found out loads - about the cellars and the neighbours! The cellars don't tend to flood but they can make the houses overly cold. This last is the reason why we wouldn't jump as I dont think we could live that happily in a cold house. Although the neighbours were renting (not a great sign of residential stability), they were lovely so it's a bit of a shame.

Thanks for your advice :T