wrote:
We have a cellar that holds water in our 180yr old house. I've
recently had to replace the bottom 3 stairs and the pantry floor
because the timber had rotted due to the water vapour when the cellar
fills up with water(approx 3 inch of water). Cellar is 7 foot deep and
until recently had no air bricks at all and the timber that rotted had
no doubt been there years so it lasted quite long.

I have installed 2 air bricks and replaced the floor and stairs with
treated(tanalised) timber. I used bitumen paint on the ends of the
timber where they came in contact with the damp masonry. This was
maybe 3 months ago and today I went down in the cellar and was rather
shocked to see that the areas of the timber that had bitumen on are
dripping with water and also there is white mould on certain parts on
the timbers?

If the walls/air are as wet as you say then you can expect water to appear
on the bitumen - the vapour will turn to water as it hits the colder
surface.

if possible, can you take photographs of the problem and upload them to
www.tinypics.com and then post the relevant links here?

This will help to give a proper response rather than trying to guess an
answer.

Also, if the water in the cellar is that bad, then you really should be
looking to cure that problem before carrying out any repairs (other than
emergency ones) and I suspect that the installation of two air bricks is not
going to be anywhere near solving the vapour probem.

Brian G