renting a house problem - please help!

[subaqua]

Do you like the place? If so, why not get the landlord to supply you with a dehumidifier and contribute to the cost of running it? If I was a landlord with a problem flat and good tenants came along I'd be happy to do that in order to keep them.

don't forget that this is CC and all landlords are bastids , even when they are not.

 

[Over The Hill]

A few thoughts-
1. Your position is made worse by the problem being there when you moved in. That puts you on a less certain footing.
2. You do not seem to have gone down the route of simply telling them of the problem and having it fixed. They may have in honesty thought they sorted it out and not be aware of the problem.
3. You need to go through some process of alerting the landlord to the problem and letting him find a solution before you have any grounds to terminate the agreement.
4. Make sure the problem is not generated by something you are doing like blocking vents or an internal water leak.

Sorry but not wishing to be harsh. Just the above need to be addressed before you take other action or you could find it very expensive and you lose your deposit if you don't do it the right way.
Hope you get it sorted out.

 

[Beebo]

I have no idea of the history or structure of the building but the current vogue, especially in the cheaply refurbished for rent world, is to block up as many openings as possible so as to prevent drafts and heat loss. Now if the house is old, say Victorian, every room would have had a fireplace and since coal was cheap, a fire burning with a skivvy running up and down stairs all day with buckets of coal. Those fires or even just a kitchen range and living room fire would have sucked massive volumes of damp air up the flue, bringing in fresh air from outside while warming the structure of the house. In an old, poorly-insulated building if you prevent that exchange of air the damp air inside will drop its moisture in the form of condensation on cold surfaces, especially in areas with little air movement behind beds and cupboards.

I agree with this.
We have solid brick walls, with no cavity. the north facing external walls get very cold and damp. We have found a dehumidifier works wonders, we now open windows and air vents as much as possible. Dry clothes outside or in well ventilated rooms, and keep the kitchen extractor on to remove steam.
A good way to tell if the air is too damp is to see how much condensation you get on bedroom windows.
Since we had a dehumidifier the condensation has dropped dramatically.

 

[Globalti]

The housing stock in the UK is woefully old and thermally inefficient; my belief is that the majority of the population and especially those living in the country, are still suffering in cold drafty and damp houses. Cycle around any rural county like Staffordshire or Cheshire to see the age of the houses, most of them built during the Victorian boom. It would be too costly to rebuild all those houses and in any case the new replacements would be built to a poor standard so if I was in government I would broaden the incentives to insulate attics in order to incentivise people to dry-line the exterior walls of their houses using modern materials like Kingspan or Cellotex.

 

[summerdays]

The housing stock in the UK is woefully old and thermally inefficient; my belief is that the majority of the population and especially those living in the country, are still suffering in cold drafty and damp houses. Cycle around any rural county like Staffordshire or Cheshire to see the age of the houses, most of them built during the Victorian boom. It would be too costly to rebuild all those houses and in any case the new replacements would be built to a poor standard so if I was in government I would broaden the incentives to insulate attics in order to incentivise people to dry-line the exterior walls of their houses using modern materials like Kingspan or Cellotex.

It's not quite as simple as that, as houses become more air-tight then there is the need to maintain air changes (there is a proper term for it), but I looked around a house that had done lots to it on one of those Green Door open days and found out that some of their changes had meant that they needed to do further changes. Anything the Government does to try and "help" often seems to do almost the opposite, look up the uptake of Green Deal incentive, which replaced the previous subsidized cavity and loft insulation.

 

[glenn forger]

If there is mould it's unlikely to be rising damp, more likely to be condensation. Do you dry clothes indoors? Is the bathroom ventilated?

 

[Archie_tect]

Worst case of condensation I've seen was in a house where the parents and 2 children dried clothes and also kept 3 great danes inside.

 

[Bromptonaut]

Agree with OTH. OP needs, first of all, to take problem up with landlord.

The loss of forced ventilation by open flues is compounded by modern UPVC windows and doors which provide almost hermetic sealing. We had problems in our last house, a standard seventies built three bed jobby of sort turned out in thousands by Wimpey, Colroy etc, with damp and mould in corners of rooms.

 

[Globalti]

Your landlord might find this thread on STW of interest: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/positive-pressure-ventilation-loft-units-which

 

[Pale Rider]

The OP seems concerned about moving and moving costs, so the aim here is to fix the problem and stay in the house.

A tenant who moves also costs the landlord money in fees to find a new tenant and possible void periods.

The damp will have to be fixed, either for existing or new tenant.

Thus the landlord ought to be amenable to fixing the problem for the existing tenant.

So as landlord and tenant - OP in this case - want the same thing, it shouldn't be too hard to achieve a happy ending.

 

[citybabe]

I agree with this.
We have solid brick walls, with no cavity. the north facing external walls get very cold and damp. We have found a dehumidifier works wonders, we now open windows and air vents as much as possible. Dry clothes outside or in well ventilated rooms, and keep the kitchen extractor on to remove steam.
A good way to tell if the air is too damp is to see how much condensation you get on bedroom windows.
Since we had a dehumidifier the condensation has dropped dramatically.

I live in a house very similar. We have solid walls and have to use 2 dehumidifiers through the winter.
We've moved all furniture away from the walls and try to keep a window or 2 on the vent just to the air flowing around.

 

[raleighnut]

+1 on the de-humidifier and leaving an air gap behind furniture.

 

[Globalti]

Have a look at the positive pressure ventilation device I've linked above; it seems to work.

 

[azir]

Yup - the house we live in has a fairly serious condensation problem. The bathroom window is always open, and we leave the door open too when no one is in there. We open kitchen windows and the back door when cooking and try to always dry clothes outside (although this is not always possible and we're considering getting a dehumidifier to help with this over winter). So far the problem is much better than when we first moved in - we have also had issues with damp that were getting conflated with condensation but the landlord has actually sorted that so it's much better. Having said that, even in our last house where the damp problem was much more extensive and the landlord refused to do anything about it (grrrr), the only thing that has been damaged has been curtains - and they were cheap and nasty anyway so we weren't fussed about making an issue of it.

 

[subaqua]

you CAN have an almost airtight house and not get mould, but you need to have air movement. thats why in grand designs et al they have an air handling plant hidden away.

external cladding can work if done properly but often it is just poor design and lack of understanding. Harvist estate in islington suffered terriby from " damp" when in reality it was a cold bridge causing condensation.the tenants bought paraffin heaters to "dry out " the flats which is bonkers as when you burn a hydrocarbon in air you will get a lot of H2O which does NOT help.

sorry i cant help with how to sort the problem further but a dehumidifier is a good solution