Saeed wrote:
The cellar of my old Victorian house is very damp.

I won't get round to any sort of tanking for a good while yet, so I am
thinking about cheap stop gap solutions to tide us over and make it a
more pleasant experience when having to go in the cellar to fetch some
tools.

I am thinking my two main prongs of attack should be ventilation and
heating.

I have the windows open, so it is nice and breezy down there, though I
did fix some mesh over the windows to prevent a vermin invasion.

I dont want to do any plumbing for radiators/gas. What options are there
for cheap effective heating, just enough to get the damp shifted, or am
I very much mistaken in seeing this as a remedy.

Tanking doesn't have to be very expensive.
Covering the walls in thin polythene dust-sheets will stop the water
evaporating into the room.
I'd personally go with something like making a very simple frame to hold
the dustsheets a couple of inches off the wall, and a fan to blow air
from the room through this space out a vent.

Just covering the walls and doing nothing else may be enough, if it's just
damp, and not water seeping in.