localised dampness concrete floor - preparation for carpets

[alexg]

i live in a 100yr+ farmers cottage which i'm slowly sorting out.

i have finally reached the stage for carpets! (woohoo... 10 months solid work later!)

the living room (ground floor) was covered with laminate flooring so i pulled this up this morning. Beneath it was some rather skanky carpet-right rubber underlay. Beneath this in half the room was a basic screed and in the other half of the room, original vinyl tiles (the floor is perfectly level).

i've been doing some research via the old owner of the house and the screed half was only laid about 10yrs ago with a proper damp proof course beneath. The other half was done approx 10yrs prior to that and appears to have a tar-like substance beneath the tiles.

Anyway... to the point in hand...

Where central heating pipes drop down through the screed or the tiles areas, there is damp ingress resulting in localised damp areas. Is there a way in which I can seal these small localised areas as the rest of the floor area seems to be doing it's job?

the new carpet will go down on some Cloud 9 Cirrus underlay which in turn will go down directly on the floor.... i've been reading up on the Cirrus products and they seem to be the favoured option.

One last question... as this room gets quite cold in the winter, is there any merit in upgrading the cirrus underlay to a Cloud 9 underlay with a slightly higher tog rating?.... will this insulate the room better against the cold concrete beneath?

thanks

alex

 

[mattysupra]

either the pipes have been laid and the dpm damaged or one of your pipes has a leak. I would get the pipes tested first. If there o.k, well your going to have to lay a surface dpm accross the whole floor. There is some info at the top of the forum about what to do.

And just stick with cirrus. Its about the best one.

p.s, you can get away without fixing the dpm if carpet going down as the floor will still breath. But would be better to seal the floor to stop any damp smell etc you 'might' get.

Thinking about it, you may be better changing the pipes for new, locate the plastic dpm and tip epoxy resin over any damaged dpm and re fill with cement/mortar.