We receive a lot of calls relating to damp issues in the home. We’ve already covered some in a previous post, but today we’re going to look at damp and condensation in bathrooms.
It’s probably no big surprise that bathrooms are a perfect environment for damp to start. Our bathroom fitters team has worked on hundreds of bathrooms throughout London, some big, but mostly are relatively small. Add in heat, poor extractor fans, lack of natural ventilation and running hot water and you’ve got a perfect recipe for damp and condensation.
Proactive Protection
There’s various ways you can prevent bathroom damp before it starts. These include ensuring you use specific bathroom paint for your walls and ceilings. Some may disagree with us and say it’s not necessary but bathroom paint has a higher gloss finish that regular paint. The gloss repels moisture much better than matt.
Another simple step is to ensure the bathroom gets enough ventilation. When you create a high level of humidity in a small room on a regular basis, you’re working your way towards a nice damp problem. Ensuring you have an extractor fan that is effective for your bathroom is a good place to start. Check that you’re using it long enough, or get one with a timer that will always run for a certain period of time after you’ve left. The obvious alternative to this is to open the windows in the bathroom. If it’s cold, close the bathroom door, it’ll block the draft but also speed up the process.
You can try to keep on top of your damp by wiping down the walls, windows and tiles. Don’t just wipe down the areas where you can see damp or condensation forming, try and cover as much of the bathroom surfaces as you can. You can buy specific hold cleaner for particularly damp areas.
Keep the air moving around your bathroom as much as possible by making sure your furniture is positioned just a little away from the walls, and that your cupboards are not overfilled. Allowing the air to flow as much as possible.
You could go a step further and buy a dehumidifier. A dehumidifier will suck in all the air in the room and squeeze out the moist air that leads to damp and mould. The water goes into a small bucket in the dehumidifier unit and you tip it away. They come in various sizes and are worthwhile for all rooms in your house.
Tools to Check for Damp
You could always call your local bathroom fitters to come over and run some tests for you. Damp specialists should use damp meters, but if you’re looking to do this yourself there’s various tools you can use. They vary from condensation strip tests, infra-red thermometers and hygrometers.
If all else fails
If you ask any good builder how to fix damp, he should tell you the following – “insulation + ventilation = reduced condensation.” We’ve looked at ways of improving your ventilation but improving your insulation is extremely important, and unfortunately, not always that easy to do. Insulation is not cheap, although there are grants available. Sometimes its not just the walls to consider for insulation, consider the floor or even the area underneath your bath tube. An insulation solution can vary between bathroom, so you are probably best to call in an expert to assess your bathroom.
We hope this helps a little. Please feel free to use the comments section below to add to our list of prevention techniques or if you have further questions.
