Damp Proofing

Basement/ground floor flat has no damp-proofing

Anonymous user 03/03/2024 - 2.56 PM

We live in a maisonnette flat - the lower ground (basement) floor is an open plan kitchen/living room/dining room, and the ground floor has a living room, bedroom, bathroom and hallway. We have the bottom two floors of a 4-story detached stone house (not sure of the age - early 1900s I think). My husband has lived in the flat for 10 years. In the past couple of years we have had an increasing problem with damp, throughout the whole flat but particularly on the bottom floor. We got someone round to look at it recently, and it transpired that there is no damp-proofing or tanking in the flat. This fact was not revealed when my husband had the Homebuyers survey done before he bought the flat. We have been informed that to deal with the damp problem, we'd need to spend around £17,000 on the tanking/damp-proof course... money which we simply do not have. We were planning to sell our flat and move on in the next couple of years; our fear now, obviously, is that we will never be able to sell the flat without getting the damp proof course put in. So my questions are: a) is there any easier/cheaper way of dealing with the damp; b) if we don't get the damp-proof course put in, is there any way on earth anyone would still buy our flat (I realise we'd have to reduce the price to reflect the lack of damp-proofing)?! It's quite a dire situation we find ourselves in, so any advice greatly appreciated!!