Our horrible cellar - what would you do?

[nananoo]

Hi all

Our little house is quickly becoming too small for us, however we have a cellar which offers a lot of potential storage space.

It has restricted headroom, but runs under half of the house. There are steel supports along the front of the house (poles and a bar). It has not been tanked, so is damp and has flooded once in the past five years. There is also a large concrete slab on the floor, which I'm convinced is covering a well!

The house is 150+ years old and is grade II listed. The local conservation officer has advised against tanking as it would spread the damp elsewhere in the house.

At the moment we are restricted with what we can store down there - it either goes mouldy or rusty!

We really do need this extra storage space, but I'm not sure if we can do anything else with the cellar!

Don't do it! If it has flooded once then it could happen again. Tanking is also really expensive.

You would need listed building consent to tank - and from what you've said your conservation officer wouldn't sign it off. What about outbuildings or an attic to convert?

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. My gut instinct too is to leave the cellar alone.

Unfortunately the roof is too low pitched to consider extending upwards (and of course there is listed building consent to hinder us). We have a small garden with no outbuildings - so again no options there. Oh dear...the only option is to move, if only we had the money!

Call in some expert companies and see what they say. You can tank anything if you do it properly. I have seen it on Grand Designs so it must be true

You may need a ground water pump. (Might help even if you don't get it tanked)

Get an estate agent in to see what it would do for your property price.

Look at other options to extend and add space (grade 2 friendly of course)

A decent garden shed can store a whole lot of stuff

Look at any similar neighbouring properties, what have they done?

(Ps, I don't really know what I am talking about but am an armchair expert )

Many thanks INeverSaidThat aka arm chair expert. I love your positivity and suggestions. This house has given us so many problems since we bought it that I often feel like giving up on projects before I start! We had a valuation recently from a couple of estate agents and if we spend much more money, we won't see any profit if we sell.

If you've got the money to either move or extend, I think you might be better off moving.

It would be a pretty tough and expensive project at the best of times, you've been advised not to do it by your conservation officer, and you'll have to get listed building consent for it.

Thinking creatively, could you put up a gypsy caravan in the garden? A nice shed?

You can get special lining to drain the damp & it channels into a gully around the edge of the floor and its then pumped out. We looked at this but ours doesn't flood and with the walls re done has been fine.
This was what our conservation expert suggested instead of tanking.

The flooding is a bigger issue though.