Old house, damp concrete floors, pushing damp

[jason61c]

2 questions....

1)

Tricky one here, house is about 300 years old, 2 of the down stairs rooms and landing have concrete floors, one of the floors was covered with lyno, when pulling it up there was puddles underneath. However with a day in the air its now dry. I'm 99% sure this has/is pushing damp into the internal walls etc. Whats the best way to stop this? I now need to replace lower timbers etc also on some parts.

2) what was once the kitchen is suffering from the same, however on this the floor has a resin applied so the floor isn't damp at all, however due to exterior concrete render over the solid walls and the concrete floor pushing the moisture I have the same problem. I've started to remove the render inside and out, some of the stone was wet to touch but seems to be drying out very quickly. Whats the best thing to do with this floor?

I guess the floors were at one point just stone on earth, in the hallway its now just 3 inch of concrete with no DPM underneath(which would still push moisture anyway), the other room i'm not sure how thick the covering is or whats underneath.

Where do I go next

Thanks all in advance, I'm just off to unblock some drains!

 

[pinenot]

Unblocking drains is a good idea. As you have already seen with the walls, the surfaces can dry out pretty quickly when an airflow gets to them, so uncover the floors and the same thing will happen most likely.
Now you need to investigate where the moisture is coming from, by the way stone wall traditional builds were designed to breath and that included the floors, English Heritage is a good place to find understanding of this.
The concrete floors in your situation are not so good, they are not breathing. but hey ho what you've got you have to live with unless your willing to go down the restoration route, so learn what you can from English Heritage and try wall and floor coverings that allow breath-ability rather than anything else. Damp wood is often caused by chronic condensation i.e. non stop over a long period, wood is pretty resilient itself but if spores of decaying fungus get in they may have to be replaced. Best advise, open up all affected surfaces to a good airflow, dehumidify if ness and see what the situation is really like. Time is your ally, the building has waited three hundred years so a little bit longer shouldn't really matter...pinenot

 

[ree]

Pics of the inside floors and walls, and the external walls at ground level would help.

What do you mean by "lower timbers"? Pics please.

Do you live on a hillside?

Is the house detached?

 

[jason61c]

house is detached, sits on a slight slope. I'll get loads of pics up in a week or so when i'm back.

I'd like to do it 'properly' and only once ideally.

 

[pinenot]

In that case look through the advise contained in English Heritage traditional stone buildings and how to repair them, all the information you need is there, good luck and let us know how your getting on...pinenot