YABT (yet another basement thread)

[edbeesley]

Hi friendly people at DIYnot!

Apologies for another thread about basements (they seem to be quite popular from what I gather). I have been reading various articles and forums for around 2 hours but I'm still not 100% on what my options are...

I've just moved into a flat in London which has a basement around 3x15m. I'm a musician with a lot of instruments that my girlfriend doesn't want distributed around the rest of the flat, so I'm hoping to turn the basement into a practice/storage space and teaching room. The floor is covered in loose irregular wood panels but underneath that appears to be just damp earth. However there is a small hole in this floor that has concretey material inside it so I don't really know what's going on floorwise (can supply pictures tomorrow when I'm back home) The walls are bone dry by the way.

The property is a rental, the landlord doesn't mind what I do down there (quiet at the back!) but won't stump up any cash for this project, so I'm looking for the cheapest solution to get a room I can have my instruments in without them getting destroyed through moisture in the air.

I have several 8x4 plywood sheets from a flight-case building project, maybe I could lay these over the ground and then cover that with lino+carpet?
Alternately I'm happy to try concreting the floor myself but given the surface area I don't know if it's feasible to mix it in a bucket in my shed. Or I could pay someone to come concrete it, does anyone know roughly how much that would cost?

Thanks for reading through this post, all advice gratefully accepted

EDIT: Forgot to add, there is an air brick type thing at the back of the basement so it does have fresh air coming in from the outside.

 

[^woody^]

I can't see any way of keeping those instruments dry, other than doing a proper conversion which will cost you £000's

Google for tanking and basement ventilation. Its not just the case of throwing some concrete down

 

[edbeesley]

So if I was to throw the concrete down would the water come up through the walls instead?

I just want to understand what the risks are at present because I've got all my gear stashed there already. The air doesn't seem that damp, I'll get a humidity meter to check. If I put the wood panels down would that somehow increase humidity in the room?

The basement definitely doesn't flood even after heavy rain, so I'm assuming all I have to worry about is humidity level?