cellar upgrade Re-generate an old or tired space and give it a fresh breath of life. Click here for answers, information and tips

[clivers]

I have an old victorian terraced property with a cellar.
Its not very damp at the moment as its well ventilated via the coal chute.
I want to upgrade it to a more practical space altho not a full blown habitable room as we use the cellar to store push bikes, mower, tools and logs for the fire.
The current floor is a well compacted earth sub soil and this will need to be dug out if we are to maintain the height we have. we are then planning a new concrete floor with DPM and to fit a rooflight over the coal chute with an air brick to maintain some ventilation.
We are looking to treat the existing brick walls with a breathable or cellar type paint to enhance the walls.
Is this a good idea? i have heard that the cellar paints are 'plastic' based and do not allow any breathability.
i have been given some lime to drop into a bucket of water as a traditional method of painting the walls. Is this recomended.
Any help gratefully received.

[LNM]

Hi clivers

I'd watch out for the drain routings while you're digging the floor up; mine go all over the place and do not appear to follow reason.

I'm in exactly the same process of improvement; except that my cellars are very damp in places and have been instructed by the surveyor to "eliminate penetrating damp to cellar areas".

"Eliminate... Ministerrr?"

Impossible, even if I tank them since all that will do is keep it out of the rooms and thence to be drained away, not eliminate it.

I've got more probs though because the damp is coming through the walls as well as well as up through them, so DPC at floor level may be useless since its coming in from above...

What I'm going to concentrate on is fixing the rotten floor joist ends above me, continue to shout at the kids to stop banging about on them, making sure its permanently and well ventilated, insulate the floor above me (so that it breathes, mind....) and woefully, having to cover up the stone flags with concrete because you can see the damp coming up between them.

[Olae]

Why not lift the flags, lay down the membrane & cement then lay the flags back on top? Thats what our neighbours have done with great sucess & I am in the process of doing.

[Steve the gas]

Hi Olae,

See dates of posts - very old perhaps done now?