We have now accepted and come to love our damp so I need as many
solutions for minimising the problem as you wonderful people can come
up with.

We have a Victorian terrace with a modern(ish) concrete floor
downstairs in the hall and back room, the front room has a suspended
timber floor. we have what looks like rising damp intermitently around
the whole ground floor. after posting on various websites like this
one, having perplexed 'professionals' round to look at it and doing my
own research I have concluded (!) that the concrete floor is pushing
moisture to the edges of the room and up the walls. we may also have a
failing damp course but I dont want to get into this as we cant afford
to re-inject/replaster etc (I'm not convinced it is failing either).

so, we are going to decorate the whole ground floor and need to know
the best ways of going about minimising the problem. so far I have come
up with following potential ideas:

-take off skirting boards, attach wooden batten under the level of the
plaster but above the concrete floor to absord moisture, put skirting
back on.

-ventilate skirting baords at various points

-damp proof concrete floor with sealant(?) before carpeting ??

-use damp proof paint as an undercoat (does this stuff work in these
circumstances or at all?)

we are intending to paint the front room (timber floor) but the back
room and hall need papered as the walls are in bad shape. should we be
taking a different approach for the intended papered and painted rooms?


any comments on the above welcome as well as any other ideas...