Removed flooring - soil / dirt smell

Linauk

Hi

I've recently purchased a property and in removing the flooring in one room an odd soil / ground smell is apparent. The flooring is not wet and the surveyor found no damp readings across the property (albeit clearly the floor was down when he completed the survey). There is no evidence of damp on the walls of the room and it's isolated to the one room. The room is open plan onto an extension and the smell was not apparent when the extension flooring was lifted.

Is this anything to be concerned about?

G_M

Which floor?

What is beneath the floorboards?

Linauk

Below some laminate flooring. No floorboards. Appears to be concrete.

JEN22

If its an older property its like;ly to have no damp proof. I had the same last year and had to have a membrane put throughout the bungalow as I just had concrete floors

shaun_from_Africa

Have a very good look at the bottoms of the skirting boards on the external wall side of the room.
Even if they look okay, give them a tap and compare the noise to that produced from a similar tap on a piece of skirting on an internal wall.
Then get something hard and pointy (such as a dart or large needle) and see how easy it is to push this into the bottoms of the skirting.

If there is damp getting in from the outside of the external wall, this can rot the skirting boards but if there is a couple of layers of gloss paint on room side of it, the rot can be very hard to spot but it can give a smell such as you are experiencing.