House / floor with crawl space underneath

[Moonlitdoor]

I have bought a house which has a crawl space underneath most of it. I want to fit wood flooring in the hall but apparently this is likely to be a problem due to moisture from the crawl space. Does anyone have any experience of this? The house currently has LVT down and carpet.

The crawl space has a floor of concrete in some places and earth in others. It's not encapsulated and there is currently no insulation between the crawl space and the house. We're going to fix this. Just don't want to spend thousands on an unsuitable floor.

This can't be right can it? That would mean that no one with a Victorian / Edwardian house would be able to install wood flooring as this is standard construction for this age of house.

Just to clarify. Do you currently have wooden floor boards under the carpets and LVT. If so,are you planning to put wood flooring down on top of the floorboards or taking them up and replacing with the wooden flooring?

btw, what do you mean by encapsulated?

Of course you can lay wooden flooring. You usually (always?) lay it on top of a subfloor and over a waterproof underlay, which is usually a requirement of the guarantee. Most turn of the century houses are built like this, as a PP said. Make sure your airbricks are clear and don’t get conned into unnecessary damp correction work.

I had a Victorian house with crawl space as you describe - nothing between the floorboards and the rubble beneath. The previous owners had replaced all the boards in the front room and there were no damp issues was bloody freezing though when it was windy.