Bathroom Ceiling - recurring damp problem - particle board

Fighter1986

Currently living in a rental property until next summer when OH and I go to buy our first place together.

Tis a lovely house and the landlord is a stand up guy, he's working very hard to help get the damp issues in one site of the house fixed.

We've had trickle vents installed on every window in the house (at a time every news outlet is telling us to use draft excluders), and had an extractor fan installed in the bathroom along with the ceiling being repainted in so called waterproof bathroom paint. 

Bathroom was done about a week ago and over the weekend paint started peeling again and where it's peeling I can see it's just particle board underneath, is it normal for a bathroom ceiling to be particle board?

It's damp as you like when you touch it where the paint has peeled off, too - but all the other surfaces in the bathroom are bone dry.

Anyone with any experiences of this I'd appreciate you sharing. I know it's the landlords responsibility but if I can take some constructive advice to the painter that's due to come back tomorrow I'd greatly appreciate it. 

They seem a bit slack-jaw, the fella just went to the effort to call be back just now to tell me "Well I spoke to the guy who repainted it and he confirmed it was plaster"...

While I'm literally stood in my bathroom with my hand touching the soggy particle board on the ceiling under their paint that's already coming off. 

rob7475

If the board is damp to touch, it can't be painted until when / if it fully dries out.

It may be worth looking at hiring a dehumidifier for a few weeks to help dry the place out. Have you recently moved in? The last tenants proably didn't open windows etc which often causes damp problems - especially if there's no mechanical extraction.

Once it's dry, it may be worth putting some damp seal type paint on before your final finish.

Fighter1986

rob7475 said:

If the board is damp to touch, it can't be painted until when / if it fully dries out.

It may be worth looking at hiring a dehumidifier for a few weeks to help dry the place out. Have you recently moved in? The last tenants proably didn't open windows etc which often causes damp problems - especially if there's no mechanical extraction.

Once it's dry, it may be worth putting some damp seal type paint on before your final finish.

We've been here for just under a year. The problems didn't start until October or so when the weather turned. The house was freshly refurbished when we moved in, and sold to a new investor very quickly after we moved in - perhaps by people who knew of, and badly patched up, underlying problems?

We own a dehumidifier. We would run it every day, if someone would be happy to pay the extra £150 a month it would cost in electricity to do so. 

Again I'd be happy to leave the bathroom window open if someone wants to chip in the extra £50 a month this will add to my gas bill, oh, and cure my asthma which flares up when inhaling cold humid air. 

We have the breather vents in the bathroom window and an extractor fan installed prior to the ceiling having been repainted but to ask anyone to regularly run a dehumidifier or leave their bathroom window open ad infinitum in the height of winter during the nastiest energy pinch our nation has ever seen is ludicrous. If an extractor is not extracting the humidity then it isn't fit for purpose. That's literally it's job. It's set to remain on for 30 minutes after we switch the lights off. We leave the bathroom door open any time it is not in use to allow air to circulate. 

Now I do appreciate that the particle board needs to be dry before it's repainted and on that basis I'm prepared to not have a shower tomorrow morning and to have the dehumidifier on in there from 6AM tomorrow morning until we go to bed to ensure it's a dry environment for the paint but we did exactly that last time as well and there reaches a point where you have to say no, my electricity bill is not taking any more beatings, enough is enough.

Question though - would it be fair to say that painting directly on to a particle board ceiling in a bathroom is a bit daft and said particle board should first be sealed somehow? 

rob7475

By particle board, I take it you mean chipboard. It's not ideal to have it in a bathroom to be honest. It should be sealed before painting though.

If your dehumidifier is costing that much to run, how much water is is extracting daily? It sounds a little excessive that it's using £3 per day in electric.

An extractor fan won't help with high humidity caused by damp air as such. It helps with the excess moisture created by showering and cooking. You need fresh air entering the house to help dilute the moist air. The trickle vents will help a little towards that. If the house has been recently renovated, I'd have a look around outside and see if there are any air bricks that have been blocked on the inside.

I take it the roof area above the bathroom ceiling has been checked for leaks?

Fighter1986

rob7475 said:

By particle board, I take it you mean chipboard. It's not ideal to have it in a bathroom to be honest. It should be sealed before painting though.

If your dehumidifier is costing that much to run, how much water is is extracting daily? It sounds a little excessive that it's using £3 per day in electric.

An extractor fan won't help with high humidity caused by damp air as such. It helps with the excess moisture created by showering and cooking. You need fresh air entering the house to help dilute the moist air. The trickle vents will help a little towards that. If the house has been recently renovated, I'd have a look around outside and see if there are any air bricks that have been blocked on the inside.

I take it the roof area above the bathroom ceiling has been checked for leaks?

Thanks Rob, that's really helpful.

Last time I ran the dehumidifier for 12 hours in our bedroom it took out just shy of a gallon of water in that time.

The house doesn't have any air bricks.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean. Check if there are any visible externally but not internally. Noted. Will do this. 

There has been a guy check our attic but I'm not sure how thorough he was.

Definitely appreciate your comments re: air circulation. Can certainly leave the bathroom window open subsequent to morning showers for the day while we aren't in but at the crack of dawn if I were to do that I'd be wheezing like Mutley from Whacky Races and TBQH I'd rather shorten this house's life than my own.

knightstyle

Useful comments above.  But just make sure you understand that all the damp is coming from the way you live, showers, cooking even breathing put water into the air and that water has to go somewhere. So it gathers on the coldest surface it can, usually windows and outside walls.  So as others have said best to keep changing or drying the air in the building by opening windows and/or using a dehumidifier.

Thrugelmir

Choice of lifestyle is yours. Ventilation is the key.  Opening the window and shutting the door is by far the easiest solution. 

FreeBear

rob7475 said: I take it the roof area above the bathroom ceiling has been checked for leaks?

Also worth checking the amount of insulation above the problem area - If there is zero or minimal insulation, it will be a cold spot and prone to condensation.

rob7475

Fighter1986 said:

Thanks Rob, that's really helpful.

Last time I ran the dehumidifier for 12 hours in our bedroom it took out just shy of a gallon of water in that time.

The house doesn't have any air bricks.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean. Check if there are any visible externally but not internally. Noted. Will do this. 

There has been a guy check our attic but I'm not sure how thorough he was.

Definitely appreciate your comments re: air circulation. Can certainly leave the bathroom window open subsequent to morning showers for the day while we aren't in but at the crack of dawn if I were to do that I'd be wheezing like Mutley from Whacky Races and TBQH I'd rather shorten this house's life than my own.

To work effectively, the dehumidifier needs to be running constantly for a few weeks. You'll find that in the first couple of weeks it collects a lot of water. This should reduce over time though. Hopefully your dehumidifier has a humidistat or other "smart" feature so it will turn itself off when the desired humidity is reached.

I'd expect a couple of litres a day to be extracted from a normal sized house with good ventilation during winter. Lots of factors can affect this though.

Freebears comment about checking the insulation is a really good shout. Warm air is drawn to cold surfaces where it then condenses so that could well be part of the problem.

If it continues to be a problem, talk to your landlord about PIV units (I can recommend the Nuaire drimaster). It's a relatively cheap unit to install and does help massively with condensation problems. The initial outlay is usually worth it for landlords as it tends to stop repeated callbacks for condensation / mould issues.