UKH

Every climber loves a good cellar, although unfortunately mine is currently used for storing bottles and tins of various things rather than a training board.

The only problem with this is that it's very damp.  The following things have all corroded through, tins of tonic water, a can of cider, a spray can of acetone and most spectacularly, an almost full can of expanding foam.

Keen to try and tackle it, not looking to make it habitable, just dry enough so that metal doesn't corrode.  No easy access to an external wall, the cellar is rectangular, stone walled, 2 of the walls have earth on the back of them (which forms the floor of rooms), 2 of the walls go to sub-floor voids.

Tanking may be a long term option, but in the short term I'm thinking either improve ventilation or stick a dehumidifier in.

Any comments on how likely the above are to help?  If I go with ventilation, should I bring the exhaust up and into our hallway, or through to the adjacent subfloor void (which does have a couple of air bricks).

Light a big fire in it, it'll both dry it out, and take your mind off having a damp cellar.

Before we had our cellar converted we ran a dehumidifier. It worked but obviously it consumed electricity and you had to remember to go upstairs with the accumulated water at intervals. 

With two walls effectively up against the earth, it is going to be tough without tanking.  However, I used to have damp problems in my cellar - enough to be paddling at times - until I paved a path around the side of the house and put a garage and hardstanding at the back.  This has stopped water getting into the ground in the immediate vicinity of the cellar and it is much drier these days.  I'm not building a training board in it, but I am delighted that the underfloor area is a good bit drier, as dry rot loves a damp underfloor area!  Amazingly, I had to replace modern electric cable routed under the floor (but off the ground), as it had drawn in moisture and was blowing the RCDs!

You could cut out and add more airbricks - you don't say how old the house is, but in the old days they didn't ventilate enough really.  

Ventilation was the big help in our cellar: a raised vent at the front and three air bricks at the back: I had thought the raised front would draw the air out, but it all went backwards and the intake is like a jet. I keep off the walls and everything is raised off a few inches, it's dry enough now to keep most things in except plywood.

Thanks.  I'm going to give the ventilation a go, having to empty a dehumidifier every few days isn't that appealing. Just need to figure out where to put the exhaust, no external walls available for air bricks direct to outside.

You really need to get a through-draft going, so if you can create a route for air to blow in one side and out the other.  Can you put some ducting under the floors to vent to outside?

Positive pressure device?

There's an old thread about them somewhere on here...

You can do it automatically, dehumidifier drains into a tank or sump, then a level actuated pump will periodically shift the water out to your drains.  Couldn't give you a price though.

All very dependant on the actual place and the problems it faces, but dealing with the moisture is quite key. Things like running a dehumidifier are only helpful if it is very small ammounts of damp. 

Ventilation for the fabric of a house is quite important as it does need to breathe, this is particularly true the case of an old house and well worth keeping in mind.

Other things that you could consider are things like perimeter drainage, damp proof membranes and the such. It would be good to get independant advice on this and it can be quite tough as there are lots of people out there that do not really understand what they are doing or generally only recommend what their company installs, which is not great especially since this stuff costs serious money.

Again, all very dependant on how much damp you are dealing with and where it is coming from. The rule of thump is you want to remove the source of the water, rather than treat the symptoms. Hope this helps.

Spot on.

Our celler is mostly tanked but one section is not .

Leave the windows shut and it is all a mold fest. Crack the windows to get a through draft and everything stored in the tanked section has been there for twenty years without damage.

All a bit of a nightmare. 

Doesn't sound like you have running water in there which is good. But it is evaporating. if you close it all in by tanking and without a means for the water to escape you can still have problems. even if you use plastic you will still have too much moisture in the air, plastic is only moisture proof not moisture vapour proof, and will need ventilation or a dehumidifier. 

To get ventilation to work you need a lot of air movement. We have a fully tanked cellar (no vapour barrier) 10'x6'x5'. We have a 6"fan direct to the outside. It Doesn't work, it draws air down the steps and across the ceiling so the bulk of the air doesn't move. So we have a dehumidifier we empty every day. Our cellar was wet not damp. 

And even then metal can corrode but not a lot. Stopping metal corroding is a high standard. We store a lot of dry food in our cellar but chisels no.

Tanking isn't too complex to do. Studding with plastic tanking material, put in a vapour barrier. Leave it open at the top. Then plaster board.

Etc etc etc. Big subject. 

The moisture is coming from outside the space through the walls/floor so unless you want to be permanently wasting a lot of electricity heating and/or dehumidifying the space (and I'd guess it would add up to a good whack over a prolonged period), you need to stop the water ingress. A little fan for ventilation probably won't be enough.

That means either sealing the walls/floor from the inside or doing earthworks outside to improve the drainage.

I'm guessing you probably can't go digging 6 foot deep trenches around your house outside (even just the services lines complication would be enough to put me off that idea). So you really are just left with sealing the walls/floor. There are lots of products out there for this kind of thing and you will probably find that you can get the humidity down to an acceptable level just by slapping some waterproof plaster all over everything and then having a small vent and fan (which you should have anyway so the radon doesn't give you lung cancer ;P )

We had false walls put in (bubble stuff to allow water to collect in a drain) overlaid with plasterboard. The drain led into a sump with an automated pump in it. Never enough water collected to run the pump, but we put the washing machine outlet into it, so it ran at intervals. Condensing tumble dryer as well.

We had a humidity controlled fan installed but I realised cold air coming down the vent was making it run all the time, so turned it off. Cellar went from being very damp to quite dry (no mould). Expensive though....