How to deal with basements in historical buildings

 

Are you planning to work in an historical building's basement?

If you are, and are based in London, in addition to heritage and planning considerations, you will need to consider the environmental challenges you will likely encounter: From vibrations linked to the proximity of the building foundations to the underground lines, to flood level considerations and even rising damp caused by the "winning combination" of increasing rainfalls (caused by climate change) and an obsolete drainage infrastructure that has been struggling for decades.

This is the point i want to expand today:

Historically, many buildings addressed damp by installing "impermeable" finishes such as wall tiles ,concrete slabs or even plastic sheets extended to the edge of each room. All of those moved the problem elsewhere rather than address it.

Of course, it is tempting to imagine that by removing those and letting the walls and floor "breath" the problem may be addressed... after all, "when the buildings were first build they did not have damp" as i have been told in the past.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, our environmental conditions have changed since the buildings were built and hence we cannot use the original set up as a benchmark when looking at buildings in the 2020s.

Not only rainfall has increased but most homes no longer have their vents and fireplaces open. In fact, many councils do not support reinstating the latter on the grounds of air pollution. And as a result, the background ventilation that helped manage moisture, is no longer available to us.

The above, combined with a lack of regular ventilation and higher window performance levels that sought out airtightness to keep the noise out, have created an optimum environment for the kind of natural habitats one does not want in their homes.

Hence, when approaching such environments, my advice would be for you to take expert advice and develop a well throughout lasting strategy rather than take a patchwork approach that could result in a displacement of the issue rather than a resolution.

#arkhlient #realestate #basementdesigns