Would this vent be necessary? Can it be blocked up?

sevenhills

Slinky wrote: »

Is the bedroom fairly small?

No, both bedrooms are double, one room has two vents, the other just one.

shortcrust

I've got something like that in my bathroom. The wind used to whistle through it. I lined the outside edges of a square of wood with door/window insulating strips and nailed it over the hole. No more draughts with no problems. Not the most elegant solution though.

moneyistooshorttomention

A vent was put in specifically in the sitting room in my last house. That was down to the gas guy saying that regulations say that there should be one there because I had a gas sitting room fire.

They will probably vary as to where they put it.

I found the gas guy was cutting out holes in my (wood plank) floor near the window to put in a metal grille. It was only a small sitting room and he could see quite clearly that I would be sitting on my sofa looking straight at the mucking-up of my new-carpet-I-was-about-to-have - but went ahead anyway. Duh!:wall:

Fortunately I realised before he left the house and had him re-do the holes he was drilling in my floor and put them in a part of the sitting room floor that wouldn't be visible.

With that vent on that wall - the wall itself looks bad (paint looking flakey/bubbly and black mould spots). Hence I'm wondering whether there is damp in the wall and this was a previous owner cheapskate way of "dealing with it"?

I'd have that vent out personally and deal with any damp problem that there is in the walls. If a vent were actually needed (ie by me for a gas fire) then I'd have a posh style new one put in the most inconspicuous place possible to do the job. But sounds like you don't actually need a vent per se - and hence I suspect it's cheapskate "deal with damp issue" stuff going on here.

Slinky

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

With that vent on that wall - the wall itself looks bad (paint looking flakey/bubbly and black mould spots). Hence I'm wondering whether there is damp in the wall and this was a previous owner cheapskate way of "dealing with it"?

I'm wondering whether the vent is the actual source of the damp!

Slinky

sevenhills wrote: »

No, both bedrooms are double, one room has two vents, the other just one.

How old is the house? Does it have fireplaces in the bedrooms? The vents could be the equivalent of the fireplaces in our 1930s doubles, in terms of the thoughts about ventilation at the time.