Can I anyone tell me why these are here?

[roughedges]

Hi there,

We have recently moved into an old house (1720 - but you wouldn't know because it has been messed around with a lot - plenty of new add ons and extensions.

We have just had a rising damp course completed and our damp coursers exposed these bricks (in the attached photo) when they pulled up some laminate flooring.

Can anyone tell me why these bricks might have been built into a concrete floor in the downstairs toilet? What do we need to take into account when putting a new floor down - should they be covered/exposed?

Thank you so much - from a DIY Newbie!

They look like drains - the sort you get in professional kitchens so you can wash the floor down

They look like air bricks to me.

@Soontobe60 oh really? So there could be a drain underneath the floor??

They look like engineering bricks. They are designed to be lighter and stronger than ordinary bricks. Probably what the builder had to hand at the time. It looks like they supported the threshold at the time.

Do you know anything about how air bricks work? Do we need to keep them open?

But if they're in the floor rather than the wall then probably not air bricks.

They are not air bricks or anything to do with a drain.

@Daftasabroom ah interesting - this would make sense with where they are located. So in theory we could cover them?

@BluIsTheColor i thought the same - where would the ventilation go if in the floor

Pretty sure you can, they should be bedded on a mortar base so the holes won't go anywhere. They may well have been put down as a guide or dam before the concrete was poured.

Ah fantastic - thank you - super helpful!

Damp Victorian Kitchen
Any experiences here welcomed….
I live in a Victorian mid-terrace (1880’s), 2 up 2 down. A damp proof course was installed and reinstalled when I bought it 4 years ago. The problem is that the internal walls between the kitchen and the living room seem to have rising damp. The kitchen floor is concrete (with some vinyl tiles over it), and I don’t know when this was laid down but I’m guessing it would not have been the original flooring. The concrete is cold and likely not breathable and I think is affecting the damp levels in the walls.
Any ideas for how to treat this? Damp proof the floor with epoxy or a membrane? Remove the concrete? (Not sure how we do that!) Tank the walls? I’m having a new kitchen and want to get this floor and wall situation sorted!
Many thanks

Join Your Old House UK repair and conservation group on FB.

The gist will be that chemical damp proofing is snake oil and that your walls need to breathe. And then there will be something about needing lime wash.

Thanks!
I wish I’d known more before I bought this house!