Musty smell in rooms.

[ARWadsworth]

A plan with no drawbacks:-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

The worst asthma I ver got was in Pietermaritzburg in a house that had been left unheated and un dehumidified in subtropical temps. Musty? it smelt of damp mould everywhere.

This weather it is hard to escape that mould - such humidity.

Heating or dehumidfifying the best options.

[stuart noble]

Without thermostatically controlled heating you might as well be living in a garden shed. You're going to kill yourself if you carry on living in those conditions I wonder if your loft insulation needs upgrading as the standards 20 years ago were miserly. Of course, no point without heating though.

[sweetheart]

First replacing windows or wallpaper has absolutely nothing to do with solving a damp problem.

I was reading on the internet that wood , constantly wet and drying out as a result of condensation can cause a musty smell. Since I cannot find any damp, I did wonder if that could be the cause. Hence I asked if anyone thought it could be the windows?

[sweetheart]

explain the persistence of symptoms of damp even when they're in use.>>>>>>>>

Well that explains that problem, thank you.

Indoors should be minimum 16C - at which point a dh can begin to work.>>>>>>>>

I didnt know that and I suppose OH does not either. Unless he wants me dead? All of which des seem to mock the idea we all have to cut down on using power etc. My Oh is just obsessed with seeing how low he can keep energy costs and bills - he bought one of those stupid meters and its been worse since. The minute we hit the " cut off " point for the days useage, he makes me switch everything off.

I do not use gas, there is none here ( village not on mains anything except electric). I do not cook very often because of OH's limits on power use. I tend to microwave to heat stuff and cook once a week for the weeks food. We have salads and sandwiches which do not require cooking.

[John Williamson]

Most, if not all of your damp problems are probably caused by insufficient ventilation and insufficient heating. Until you address these problems, your mustiness and other problems are unlikely to go away. I ensure that I have permanent ventilation in all rooms, and just live with the extra cost of heating the incoming cold air. I have no damp problems at all, but my heating bills are probably about 20% higher than they would be if I shut off all the vents. I do, however, save money by not having to replace household fabrics and mildewed clothes on a regular basis.

Damp causes molds and fungi to prosper, which give off spores, causing medical problems such as asthma. They also damage the organic parts of your house. Cold damp conditions and a lack of ventilation also encourage bronchial infections.

In a way, the lack of gas for cooking in your house is a blessing, because it means there's less humidity in the house than there would be otherwise, as burning gas makes water.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

He's a right skinflint. Dump him and run away with Adam.

[NT]

I remember seeing a demo from the 1930s of 2 petri dish cultures in a room, once with everything shut, and again with the window ajar. The closed room had a way higher count of growing bugs of all kinds.

NT

[NT]

AIUI the usual advice is to knwck 1C off the usual 20C setting. I dont know anyone in the mainstream suggesting 10C.

Windows dont cause damp, unless rain is running in through them. They get wet if there's already damp.

NT

[ARWadsworth]

Do go and f*ck yourself.

It will keep you warm.

[sweetheart]

Ye Gods exchange one damp house for another?

I put the heating on . OH doesn't seem to have realised it yet.

[sweetheart]

know anyone in the mainstream suggesting 10C.>>>>>>>

I didnt know that and I doubt he does. He gets his ideasfrom that BBC Spotlight presenter ( if anyone is in the SW) Justin ( cant recall the surnname). he is always going on about not putting his heating on until Christmas even when its really cold.

He seems to turn it off religiously in April too. My OH told me that " its the middle of June, you dont have heating this time of year"

The house was 10 degrees. I have thermometers in every room ( because of my chest, I know in winter I have to have the room at 20 degrees if I am ill). I put the heating on and now the bedroom is 16 degrees and the sitting room is 19 degrees - and after just two days the damp is going ( the bed clothes arent damp anymore) but I still have the smell,although its less than it was.

The sitting room is dry and warm and I slept in there the other night when I couldnt breathe

So,I am thinking you are right about the tempreture being a main problem here.

Thanks.

[Peter Parry]

Congratulations, you have just invented energy free refrigeration. Sell the mechanism and use the profits to heat the house or move to warmer climes.

[Terry Fields]

Beg, borrow, or steal a 'desiccant wheel' dehumidifier; they work down to about 2 deg C. They are more expensive to buy, though. I use one in the garage, where we store documents and electronic gear that would be damaged by excessive humidity, even then it struggles on windy wet days.

I understood it was something like 20 deg C in the lounge, and 22 if you're a wrinkly. SWMBO has suffered in the past with a 'chest', and likes it at 23 - 24 degC. Out gas bill is ~£700 per annum, including domestic hot water. We live in the next county to you, and have been astonished how damp it is here all year round.

The sort of temperature numbers you are talking about are plainly ridiculous.

Keep in mind that damp and mould damages the building fabric as well as the human respiratory system. Cheese-paring on this scale is seeing only part of the 'problem' (which was generated by econutcases for their own reasons). This is essentially grounds for divorce; and I sense that to solve your damp problem some sort of revolution is in the offing.

Take the power monitor and throw it away; you're talking about shortened life expectancy here.

You aren't eating properly either. With a house that cold you need a high-fat diet, usually obtained from cooked meats. Living in 10 deg C and eating salads, in a mouldy atmosphere, is going to lead to shortened lives.

You're going to have to make big changes. They will be uncomfortable.

Terry Fields

[sweetheart]

Thank you. I understand what you are saying. I have put the heating on and its now 21 in the sitting room and 18 in the bedroom. That has not been easy by the way.

[Terry Fields]

Those are not unreasonable figures, but 10 deg C certainly is.

I can well imagine.

My very elderly mother-in-law is the same, although she has plenty of money, but against all advice she takes it down to the level of personal hygiene, which was a strip-wash at the sink once a week. Then cellulitis set in, and after three recurrences and three trips to hospital (the sort of thing she did was to take the first three antibiotic pills and then say 'I'm fed up with that', so it all came back again) the big one came and she was unable to look after herself.

We live 250 miles away, and my wife had to spend seven weeks of

15-hour days getting her back on her feet and arranging a care package. This of course costs far more than she ever saved through her cheese-paring, and has severely reduced her already limited mobility. However, the bills have now come in for that period, and she's been ringing up what she calls 'the gas board' to get the meter checked, as she refuses to believe that anyone could squander £500 on gas over the six-month winter period.

But this is the sort of thing that happens when cheese-paring becomes an end in itself: it's killing my mother-in-law. So I fully understand the difficulties you are labouring under, but the bigger picture is that unless you get rid of the damp, heat the rooms, and eat properly, the money saved by watching the energy monitor will be an irrelevance.

Terry Fields

[stuart noble]

I think a lot of this is age related, and it creeps up on you if you're not careful. I find myself being frugal to the point of silliness and I have to force myself to spend money (well, it's a civic duty to aid the recovery isn't it?) I think the OP may now be going overboard with the temperatures. I find

17-18 deg comfortable and high enough to keep the place dry and warm. I don't lounge about in my vest but nor do I wear more than one jumper in the winter

[Terry Fields]

My MiL always has been a highly neurotic hypochondriac. She deliberately chose to make herself housebound because the outside world is full of dog poo and dustcarts, two of her favourite neuroses. Her house was dirty and had a rodent infestation, until my wife cleaned it and got rid of the mice - seven weeks work including looking after her bedridden mother. MiL couldn't care less about things like these, but hoards kitchen paper and hand wash; she currently has about 50 of each in stock that she won't use in case they come in useful.

Did I tell you about the 20,000 Tesco bags she had stored away 'in case they come in useful'? It took three months to clear them, because random ones had the occasional cheque book or passbook in them, and they all had to be turned inside out before being dumped to make sure they were empty. This exercise caused a screaming match, and it wasn't the first or the last.

The doctor has prescribed a medicated skin cream to kill the bacteria that cause her skin infection. After asking for a double dose (two canisters per month instead of one because she wanted a stockpile, which was refused) she has now taken to stockpiling it by the simple expedient of not using it. Guess what? Cellulitis Attack Number 5 is now under way, and it seems like the antibiotics are having less effect.

Horses for courses. If my lounge ran at 18 degC, I'd be shivering. But then again, I don't eat red meat or high-fat foods so don't have personal 'central heating' to the extent I could turn the CH down to those sorts of figures.

Terry Fields

[george ~ dicegeorge]

old houses ventilate themselves - too much in windy weather. modern double glazed ones can be ventilated the correct amount

you need a humidity meter?

[g]

[Terry Fields]

You beat me to it.

I had thought of advising sweetheart to monitor the extent of the musty smell by, instead of controlling the rooms temperature, controlling it by humidity instead. This would need a fast-ish response humidity gauge - some of the 'weather station' variety can be very slow responding and therefore unsuitable for this application.

I use one very similar to this one:

would give her a 'half-way house' between her OH's drastic energy-monitoring, and controlling the damp by heating the rooms fully. OTOH having apparently won a battle over the heating, it might be politic to leave things as they are.

Technical note: AIUI mould growth (and the accompanying musty smell) starts at a Relative Humidity of 68 percent, although I don't know if there is also a temperature factor here. So keeping the RH down below this figure will slow or stop mould growth, allowing a minimum of heating to be used. Another way would be to use a desiccant-wheel dehumidifier (which would also add some heat to the room in question).

I use one of these to keep the garage mould-free, and it has good reviews:

the real problem is the presence of so much water, and it seems that sweetheart has partly dealt with this by double glazing some of the property. It might be best in the long term to finish that, and meantime heat the rooms at a level that keeps the musty smell at bay.

Terry Fields