Almost half of private renters living with damp or mould – even in summer, Citizens Advice warns

18 comments

1. Is this not more of an issue with age of our housing in the country. We have a lot of old housing with “upgraded” insulation. Which require upkeep and airflow. But there is a lack of culture around managing condensation in the home. The amount of people who cook with the windows shut is maddening.

   But new builds which address this are criticised for not having thick walls or being flimsy.

2. People need to know if they dry washing in the house they need to open the window. That moisture needs to go somewhere.
   Also air bricks and window trickle vents are there for a reason, lost count of the amount of houses where the tenant has sealed them up.

3. I’m curious what percentage of owner-occupied homes also have damp or mould. It’s a pretty big problem for our housing stock.

4. I rented for a lot longer than I would have liked, so I am not here saying rented housing is perfect and it’s all the fault of tenants. Some rented housing is very badly maintained, because it can be. The house net door to me was rented out for 20 years or so by someone who spend basically nothing on maintenance – it’s a desirable area for renting so all they had to do was charge a bit under the going rate and they never had a shortage of tenants. Now it has got to the point that it can’t be rented out anymore because there is no way it will get a certificate (needs a new boiler, new roof, probably re-woring, new windows, new doors – basically everything other than the bricks needs replacing) it is currently for sale. So there are bad landlords out there – lots of them.

   That said, when I looked for my last rented house so many had damp, and all of them had all of the windows closed – and these were Victorian / Edwardian houses that need a bit of air. One of them literally had a bathroom ceiling that was totally black with mould, and the window was closed. We once lived next door to a couple who we noticed were always in the house in just underwear. Each to their own. Then one day they asked us if we had mould – because they did, and they had tried having the heating on full continuously for a month to dry it out but it had made no difference – if anything it was worse. Not a single window open anywhere.

   Yes some houses are shockingly maintained, and opening a window is not going to help with structural issues, but fitting double glazing to an old house and keeping all of them closed all of the time will make it damp – but a lot of people – both tenants and owners – don’t seem to know this.

5. So do plenty of home owners. 
   You know what you do? You get off you arse and  you clean it. Every day if you have to.

6. Not all, but certainly some of this is a reluctance by landlords to spend money on their housing stock. If a tenant is taking all reasonable steps to remove a problem and it requires professional work to be carried out , then the landlord should step in and resolve the issue. There are too many people living in sub-standard housing because of greed . Hopefully, this government will introduce measures to help.

7. Most of our UK housing stock is over 100yrs old, is poorly insulated, and poorly ventilated for modern living, so this makes sense.

8. As a renter we had an internal bathroom, so no window and the extract as it turned out just vented into the attic. But the mould was deffo our fault, because we were the ones using the shower, refusing to leave the windows open all day in the winter, and having the temerity to own a tumble dryer, according to the letting agent.

9. Unsurprising. I have to regularly ‘de-mold’ our bathroom, it’s a dormer so the shower area is basically a small box. There’s no ventilation or extractor fan so it just gets very humid, very quick and stays that way.

   Window is left wide open all day (weather allowing) and yet it still persists. Eventually will get it re-done and have an extractor fan installed too.

   Can only imagine how bad some other houses must get if people aren’t on top of it.

10. This statistic isn’t helpful if there is no corresponding number for how many owner occupiers who live in mouldy conditions. If half of homeowners have to deal with mould it’s more about the UK having crappy housing stock/ weather and it is a problem for everyone.

    If it is significantly less, or none at all, it is far more about either the rental housing stock itself, or landlord and tenant behaviour.

    That granular breakdown seems to be the part that is missing in all of these housing crisis articles.

11. I’ve lived in maybe 15 rented properties in my time, with dozens of housemates.

    In every case of ‘damp’ in these places, the tenants would think nothing of drying soaking wet clothes in their bedrooms, cooking huge steamy rice meals, and having hot showers on freezing cold mornings with the windows and doors closed.

    Rooms that had been bone dry with one tenant, would be black and mouldy a month later with a different tenant who didn’t so much as crack a window when drying clothes.

    99% of damp issues in UK houses are the result of easily remedied poor ventilation and the daft practice of tenants. The other 1% are roof and render leaks, but these present completely differently.

12. One thing I learnt to remove black mold living in an older house is. Don’t use bleach etc. use white vinegar. The bleach crystallizes and keeps the mold. The vinegar dissolves it.

13. I am not surprised. Why don’t all houses in the UK have anti-mould/mould-proof paint in bathrooms? I think it should be mandatory as landlords always use the cheapest white/off white paint

    In old houses just opening windows doesn’t do the job especially when humidity is quite high outside and it’s harder to warm up bathrooms, I had to get a dehumidifier and it did wonders but the landlady did not want to contribute to buying it.

    In terms of hanging clothes indoors – at certain times of the year the stuff just doesn’t dry because it’s so humid. Once again the dehumidifier fixed that for me, much better than keeping windows open for days in hopes for stuff to dry.

    However dehumidifiers are super expensive, I can see not everyone is able to afford one, especially bigger ones that can cover the majority of the house. If anything I wish I had two dehumidifiers, one for upstairs and one for downstairs

14. Question for the general populace … how often are you airing your flat/house out a day/week?

15. As a surveyor, there’s a clear difference between dampness and condensation. Some tenanted properties are not well maintained. If there is an underlying damp issue Landlords cannot remortgage until the issue has been resolved.

    If there is a condensation problem landlords should look at positive ventilation input systems!

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17. I bought a good humidifier- seems to have really mitigated the damp issues.

18. I own my flat and the building management company are reluctant to put holes in the building so I’m struggling to even get an extractor fan.