thinking about making my fettling basement into a proper room – any on line guides to how to sort the damp? Also min hieght per building regs for a habitable room? got just over 2m and lose some and don’t want to go to excavating

We have done this on a few house – we used http://www.newton-membranes.co.uk/System500.htm every time (I have two and a half rolls and all fixings for sale if you want…). I would always use something like this, then finished how you want.

Min ht IIRC was 2m, with a lower ‘area’ allowed (but not clearly defined). You also need means of escape to fire regs – we ended up with fully opening escape windows (off the shelf sizing) and built permanent steps (or in one case as desk) as a way of climbing up and out.

Ive got a few metres (3m I think) of newton spare too, and plugs/grommets if you want to pick up from malvern.

My cellar project here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/northmalvern/CellarProject

Didnt tank the whole lot as I wanted to control where any water went and leave the stone wall open to breathe. This is an “external” basement room between the house and the malvern hills.

I have another internal basement room that’s wet which is the next project – that will be tanked using a liquid membrane developed in Germany. The hydrophobic liquid can also be mixed with plaster as well for finishing.

I take an “flexible” view of building regs. That’ll get the do-gooders out…

I have 2 cellars at the back of my flat I would like to do, however they are pretty big so I am dreading doing it. I got a quote to do it and to just tank it (no finishing) the average price was 27K. Hence if I want to do it, I will have to do it myself.

How did you clean the old mortar/lime/concrete off the walls stoner?

Wet sand blast. Makes a mess, but not a dusty mess, so the rest of the house isnt coated in an inch of dust.
Cost a couple of hundred quid for the day for a machine, 8 bags of sand and a local student to get filthy.

The sand, water and crap falls to the floor where you shovel it up and export. came out well. Then just got my builder neighbour in to do a bit of pointing to the brick vaulting and it looks sweet.

Obviously it’s not sealed so over time efferescence will build up again (the fine crystalline dangly powder) but you can just brush it off or hoover it off.

cool, looks very good.

thanks that is all very helpful, stoner i saw those pics before and am well impressed – no problem ref fire as it was built as a garage (house is in effect 2 stories at front and 3 at rear so has door access to garden – but is 1930’s and the dampproof course is at ceiling level in the bricked up “garage” with earth on most of outside

– sorry guys not in market yet for materials as need to get drawings done to extend out to make it worthwhile size room and get mrs antigee to abandon her loft project ideas- but now i do know that i can probably do the tanking and fitting out myself and that i’ve probably got enough hieght

Hmm. Makes me want to tank my cellar – sick of stuff going rusty down there (bikes included!).