Many years ago, I had just moved into a new home.  It wasn’t the house we have now, it was a small mid century daylight rambler.  I’d been there about a week when we got a huge accumulation of heavy, wet snow.  The snow melted quickly, the ground got saturated, and my basement (which the previous owner had just finished with carpet and drywall) flooded.  What a mess!

My boyfriend (now husband) and I spent New Year’s Eve pumping water out of my basement with wet vacs.

And all the fun plans I had for sprucing up my little rambler were put on hold while I dealt with the damage and had a French drain installed.

Moisture damage waits for no one.  And, since many of us will need to deal with it at some point in our lives, I thought this guest post was worth sharing.

The following is a contributed post.  For more information on my contributed posts, please click here.

How To Stay On Top Of Damp In Your Home

If you have a damp problem in your home, it can be incredibly expensive to fix. It’s not just a case of wiping the walls down and cleaning away any black spots because it’s just going to come back again. If you want to deal with the damp effectively, you need to make a constant effort to keep excess moisture from building up so the problem doesn’t occur in the first place. If you have trouble with damp in your home, these are some of the best ways to stay on top of it. 

Do Regular Checks

If you can catch the problem early and take action, you may be able to stop the damp from setting in. When you have a bit of excess moisture building up on the surface of the wall, that isn’t too much of a problem and it should be simple to deal with. It’s when the water soaks into the wall and the damp really sets in that you need to be worried, so it’s important that you regularly check for any signs of damp around the home. If you make this part of your regular home maintenance routine, you should be able to catch it before it gets out of hand. 

Identify The Problem Areas

When you’re doing your checks, you will probably start to notice certain areas that are problematic. These might be rooms like the bathroom where ventilation is an issue or certain windows that build up a lot of condensation. If you have a basement in your house, that’s likely to be a big problem area for damp as well. You need to identify these problem areas and find ways to reduce the damp. 

Water Pumps

Dealing with damp in the basement can be tough but, if you don’t tackle the problem there, it will start to spread throughout the house. The best way to keep your basement dry is to install a Tsurumi sump pump on the property, especially if the lower floors of the house sit below the water table. The pump will divert a lot of the water so it doesn’t seep into the walls and cause damp. If your basement is prone to flooding, you need to boost the flood defenses around your home, otherwise, you will struggle to deal with the damp. 

Ventilation

Damp problems that are caused by lack of ventilation are actually a lot easier to deal with in most cases. Bathrooms and kitchens often get damp because you create a lot of steam when showering and cooking and, if that steam doesn’t have anywhere to go, it sits on the walls and starts to get damp.

 

 

Sometimes opening a window and using an extractor fan is enough to deal with the issue but, if it is still a problem, you should consider getting a dehumidifier to take the excess moisture out of the air. 

The key to dealing with damp is prevention because, if you let it set in, that’s when you will have to spend a lot of money on extensive repairs.

 

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