A Victorian terrace with a lean-to extension at the back...what to do about the flooring. The lean-to is quite damp and poorly ventilated. I think it is single skinned brick. The floor is a concrete slab (adjoining kitchen is suspended floor, the lean-to is beyond the kitchen). There are tiles over it so its hard to tell exactly what's happening underneath, but a few of the tiles have lifted slightly and there seems to be some slight salt marks on the grout which suggests that maybe damp is coming up. My other plans involve getting insulating the roof, adding an extractor fan and installing a radiator. A big issue is that the room is rendered in sand and cement, so knowing that can't be removed at this point in time due to my budget, I don't want to put insulated plasterboard on the walls or anything like that because I'm concerned it will just trap moisture.
I've flip-flopped between spending quite a lot of money to try and redo everything in the kitchen and utility room, but I've realised that my end goal is just to have a warmer and dryer space. It doesn't need to be perfect though and in reality it would probably need to be knocked down and rebuilt properly to make it perfect. There simply isn't the budget for that and I need to bear both the budget and the end goal in mind. I've been messed around a bit with a builder and am now having to get other quotes. I've had a one which gives me two options for the floor:
1) Break up the existing floor. Layer of sand, polyurethene insulation, DPM, concrete and screed.
So essentially relaying the concrete floor with a DPM.
2) Break up the existing floor. 150mm air gap underneath timber joists. Timber rafters, insulation and chipboard.
This reads to me as basically digging down to the earth or whatever is underneath, then building a suspended floor. It sounds as though there would be bare earth left below. No mention of airbricks etc. here which I would need to ask about. When I discussed this with the builder I had the impression that the option was to build the suspended floor over the existing concrete floor, so the method set out in the quote isn't quite what I expected.
3) Not from the builder, but an architect friend of mine suggested that I could just have a levelling screed applied over the existing floor, after the tiles have been taken up, the paint it so it was a bit less 'concrete-y' This would almost be a temporary measure to see if/where any damp is coming in and it would also allow the damp to escape. I assume the screed they are suggesting must be permeable in some way but I would need to ask them I think they have suggested it to try and save me some money, because there are other issues with the room like it being rendered in sand and cement. They are suggesting I view it as a bit more of a 'utility' room, rather than covering things up and trying to make it like an extension to the kitchen. This is what the previous owners have done, which looked nice when I viewed the house and for a few years since, but now its quite evidently poorly constructed.
Could anyone provide some suggestions on the pros and cons of these options? Options 1 and 2 have been quoted at £3.5k and £4.5k respectively, including VAT. I assume Option 3 would be quite a bit less, and I am leaning towards this because i'm concerned that the other options are like throwing good money after bad if there are still other things that aren't changing e.g. the sand/cement render. If there was a suspended floor installed, I'm not sure why the existing concrete needs to come up, as long as the wood was protected from it somehow.
I've flip-flopped between spending quite a lot of money to try and redo everything in the kitchen and utility room, but I've realised that my end goal is just to have a warmer and dryer space. It doesn't need to be perfect though and in reality it would probably need to be knocked down and rebuilt properly to make it perfect. There simply isn't the budget for that and I need to bear both the budget and the end goal in mind. I've been messed around a bit with a builder and am now having to get other quotes. I've had a one which gives me two options for the floor:
1) Break up the existing floor. Layer of sand, polyurethene insulation, DPM, concrete and screed.
So essentially relaying the concrete floor with a DPM.
2) Break up the existing floor. 150mm air gap underneath timber joists. Timber rafters, insulation and chipboard.
This reads to me as basically digging down to the earth or whatever is underneath, then building a suspended floor. It sounds as though there would be bare earth left below. No mention of airbricks etc. here which I would need to ask about. When I discussed this with the builder I had the impression that the option was to build the suspended floor over the existing concrete floor, so the method set out in the quote isn't quite what I expected.
3) Not from the builder, but an architect friend of mine suggested that I could just have a levelling screed applied over the existing floor, after the tiles have been taken up, the paint it so it was a bit less 'concrete-y' This would almost be a temporary measure to see if/where any damp is coming in and it would also allow the damp to escape. I assume the screed they are suggesting must be permeable in some way but I would need to ask them I think they have suggested it to try and save me some money, because there are other issues with the room like it being rendered in sand and cement. They are suggesting I view it as a bit more of a 'utility' room, rather than covering things up and trying to make it like an extension to the kitchen. This is what the previous owners have done, which looked nice when I viewed the house and for a few years since, but now its quite evidently poorly constructed.
Could anyone provide some suggestions on the pros and cons of these options? Options 1 and 2 have been quoted at £3.5k and £4.5k respectively, including VAT. I assume Option 3 would be quite a bit less, and I am leaning towards this because i'm concerned that the other options are like throwing good money after bad if there are still other things that aren't changing e.g. the sand/cement render. If there was a suspended floor installed, I'm not sure why the existing concrete needs to come up, as long as the wood was protected from it somehow.
