Damp behind headboard. Advice please.

Doozergirl

brightondave said:

Doozergirl said:

It isn't just ventilation, you need warmth as well because water condenses specifically upon the coldest surfaces in a room and you're breathing right next to it, so it's exacerbating the problem.   The simple solution is to move  furniture off the wall completely and allow warm air to circulate. 

The permanent solution is to insulate the wall.  There's a lot of stuff against that wall, no circulation and  not lot of opportunity for the wall to warm up at all.  Insulated plasterboard and a reskim is the easiest way of doing it.  

If you simply cannot  move the furniture off that wall to allow air to circulate, then an idea *might* be to insulate fully behind the headboard and seal it somehow, but I'd still worry about kind of ecosystem developing behind it.   

I'd opt for a bedstead that would allow air to circulate under and over the bed, minimising the surface area of anything that needs to be against that wall to pretty much only the mattress.  

Thanks for your input today Doozergirl especially the insulated plasterboard / Reskim part.

Thanks, I was a bit all over the place in that post.  Insulating the whole thing would allow you to put whatever you liked against that wall in the future.  You wouldn't have to create air gaps - reading back, it looks I was saying you still needed to.  

TELLIT01

Fitting spacers to the back of the headboard to keep it a couple of inches off the wall should greatly improve airflow once you have dried the wall out.

Jeepers_Creepers

Once you move the bed forward to leave - initially at least - a really good ventilation gap of at least 6" ideally more, I'd be inclined to allow the wall to dry naturally - obviously taking care to ventilate the room properly, reduce the amount of moisture in the air etc. - and just see what happens.

If the issue was caused by the headboard stopping air flow, then that wall should sort itself out and be just like the other walls in that room - perfectly ok and ready for a lick of paint. If you use artificial ways to dry it - direct heat, a dehumidifier etc - that will almost certainly work faster, yes, but might also mislead you into thinking that it's been sorted permanently. I mean, if you 'air' that wall just like every other wall in that room, and it still remains damp, then you have a greater problem that needs tackling. I think it would be useful to know if this is the case sooner rather than later?

Any chance of a photo of the outside of that wall, BDave?