Back cellar room
The "concrete" floor turned out to be a maximum of 3/4" thick, just spread on soil when I came to dig it out, so no wonder it was damp. I dug out about 5" in total, putting back 2" of concrete on a membrane. With the extra height the room now has just over 6ft of headroom.
Note the temporary prop supporting the floor above: despite this there was a fall of about 3" to the right hand side of this picture, so much levelling work had to be done. The principal reason for this was an inadequate trimmer joist which spanned some 6ft, supporting several joist ends, itself supported only by ordinary joists. The reason for this must have been in connection with a large central heating boiler since there was no evidence of an open fire in this room.
This set of images © John Woodhouse, 2005
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