I’m hoping someone may be able to offer us some ventilation advice.
We live in a 300-year-old cob cottage with a suspended wooden floor in the sitting room (amongst other places). From the number of slugs, we take off the carpet of a morning, I’m guessing that it’s just bare earth underneath the floor boards.
We have one air brick to the front of the house which we keep clear, but nothing to the back and there is a conservatory built directly on the back of the sitting room, sandwiched between two pre-existing walls so there is no potential to add another one at the back which I think would be the ideal situation to get a through-flow of air.
More and more over the last couple of years, we have been able to smell that there is some damp behind the external corner (but still within the room) of the chimneybreast/inglenook fireplace. The cottages are all part of terrace and this is up against a neighbour’s wall which has no issues and so we assume that this is happening just because the ventilation is not reaching this area of the recess, with it being tucked around the corner.
We’d wondered about putting a vent in the floor to allow air from the recess to circulate into the room and provide a through-flow, but am worried this may make it cold/damp in the sitting room itself. Alternatively, we’d wondered about whether another airbrick on the front would help or possibly a positive input ventilation system.
Any thoughts on a possible solution would be much appreciated.