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Help with damp house

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I live in a rented house, the landlord is shit and takes months to do any repairs, we are currently getting the council involved but these things take time. We're starting to look at buying a house so there's not much point in moving to another rented house as we hope to buy within the next 6 months so we're trying to make the best of what we've got at the moment.

Here's the deal. We live in a 2 bed terraced house, it has a few leaks, most noticably in the chimney in the attic which is above our bedroom which is causing mould. We also have mould in the second bedroom which is the extention. There aren't any serious damp problems downstairs.

How can I keep the damp at bay? We keep windows open but it doesn't seem to help. I get confused whether to have windows open or closed, heating on or off. When it starts to get cold should we have the heating on and the windows open? Will this waste a lot of money? The heating doesn't have a thermostat so we can't keep it on low all the time, it's either on or off.

Any help would be appriciated :)

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I had this problem with a landlord and damp house a few years ago. Most of the bedrooms had mould on the wall above the window and in several other patches. I got these trays with little crystals in that absorb the moisture and form a gel, you can buy them in places like homebase. Other things that help are not drying washing indoors if possible, opening windows whenever it's warm enough, wiping off windows when they have water on the inside, opening windows when cooking.

    One other option would be to get a dehumidifier, but these aren't cheap to run as they use quite a bit of electric I think (not sure on this). You could come to an agreement with your landlord and say if they aren't going to do the work to make the house safe then they can contribute towards electricity bills/buying the dehumidifier.

    The thing that eventually got a reaction to do anything from my old landlord was threatening him with environmental health. We didn't really know how we'd go about this, but did say that if he didn't sort it out or do something then we'd take it further. He then installed vents in some rooms. Only problem was this made it colder during the winter.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Anything you do will be largely pointless whilst the cause still exists. The leak will need fixing before you can sort the mould out.
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