A house with no ventilation

BBJ

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Hi, i have a 2 bed terraced house around 150 years old with around 100 years of "improvements" to rectify. my biggest problem at the moment is that it has no ventilation aside from a small fan in the bathroom. It has 4 fire places, the 2 upstairs are bricked up, the front room has been boxed open with plasterboard to the underside and the kitchen is similar except it has had the lintle raised to about 1.5m and the plasterboard to the underside.it is also central heated and has double glazing with no vents , as you can imagine condensation and blackspot are like unwanted lodgers its a nightmare! what is the easiest way to ventilate the place and get rid of the mould and damp?
 
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There is probably not a short answer to that question. If you are planning on doing it properly then your best bet would be to invest in a book on the subject, especially if there are 100 years of "improvements" that need to be put right.
Something like this
Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses - A guide to conservation, sustainability and economy by Bevis Claxton. Available from a few on-line retailers.
 
Thanks for the reply. I have checked a couple of books and there seems to be a fair bit of advice for cavity walls,sub floor venting with airbricks and boarded over fireplaces. unfortunately i have a completely solid ground floor, no wall cavities, 2 bricked up fireplaces and 2 open with a plasterboard seal. I will check out the book suggestion tho, and if anyone has any other ideas i'm all ears!!

thanks again.
 
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thanks for the reply. I have tried opening windows, but the house just gets very cold as it is worse in the winter. the main bedroom is the most affected and as it opens on to a fairly busy road it gets cold and very noisy. even with the fan in the bathroom and windows open we still get black spot in the bathroom and around all the windows and wardrobes. there just seems to be no movement of air.
 
On a rather cynical note - reduce the room temperature to 15C and you should see a considerable reduction in the problems that are occuring, whether or not you could live with 15C is another matter.

On the assumption that the majority of people would suffer at 15C then the only option available would be to introduce internal insulation to the walls and if your really keen, dig up the floors and put in an insulated floor slab (you will be amazed at the improvements in comfort levels, as well as reduced fuel bills, not to mention what the energy reduction will do for your contribution towards the carbon initiative - reduced carbon and CO2 emissions!) - a win, win situation or should that be solution!

Going back to the wall insulation, use a PIR sandwich board thermalite super or similar - when you come to fitting it make sure you leave a minimum cavity of 25mm between the existing wall and the back of the insulation. Best way of doing this is to use some 25mm thick bitumen impregnated board cut into say 100 x 150 and stick them onto the wall at 400 centres horizontally and say 600 centres vertically (same adhesive as recommended by the manufacturer for the wall board). Once set, apply adhesive to these dab's and stick the insulated plasterboard in place, which will give you your cavity, which has the added benefit of giving you the opportunity of being able to run new electrical cables in the cavity, rather than having to revert to surface mounted socket outlets (or whatever). Whatever you do, do not use mechanical fixings which would go through the impregnated bitumen board.

One point, not that I am trying to tell anyone how to suck eggs! - you only need to insulate the external walls.

Regards
 
thanks for the info. i'm a little hesitant to dig the floor up as it still has the original parquet and tiles, i will get a costing together for the wall insulation tho.

thanks again
 
Retro fit trickle vents to double glazing [if timber] and put vents in all the fireplaces.
 

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