Damp and rotting skirting board

[elcastor]

Hope this is the right forum category for this, apologies if not.

Long story short... we had a shelving unit pushed up against a wall in the living room of the house, it's been there between one and two years. Moved it away recently and found a damp patch on the carpet around 1.5 ft long by 1 ft deep. Still quite wet. Pulled up the carpet and it had partly got through to the underlay and rotted the skirting board significantly on the underside. I poked about a 1 ft long + inch in height section of rotted wood off the underside of skirting board and got rid (obviously will need replacing). Spent the day drying out the underlay, which is fine, and wool carpet, which is totally goosed. The colour of the stain is very nasty, also noted smell of ammonia (we have no pets, so no idea how this could be?) and very musty. Pulled up underlay and no signs of moisture underneath (floor is concrete). Everything is bone dry now.

This is slap bang in the middle of a semi-detached house, nowhere near outside wall. No roof leak. Far away from chimney stack, all piping - water, central heating & radiators. Only idea I can come up with is this is where the condensation has been gathering, even though the room in general is well ventilated and never has an issue with condensation (walls, windows, or anything).

I'm very new to DIY and homeownership, so I'm not sure where to go next. Probably looking at needing new carpet/flooring and skirting boards. If I decide not to do this myself what type of tradesperson should I get in to look at it? I'm assuming flooring people generally deal with skirting too, and it is done afterwards?

I'll see if I can get a photo of it, which may help but if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

 

[mrrusty]

Almost certainly condensation due to lack of air movement. If it's just a piece of skirting, it's a very easy DIY repair. The hardest bit will be cutting the joints to the old skirt to get a neat joint, but for just one piece, a bit of care with filler can hide a dodgy joint. (or you could practice jointing first - skirt is cheap). You don't need power tools - a hand mitre saw and a coping saw are enough for jointing skirting (although if you intend to do more DIY a good way to accumulate tools is to buy one for each project and justify it by the labour you are saving DIYing it. )

Easiest way to fix is to use expanding foam. Get a foam gun (£15 ish) a can of adhesive foam (£10 ish) and use foam sparingly holding the skirt in place with a weight until the foam goes off. If you need the foam again <2 months or so you can leave it on the gun, otherwise you'll need some gun cleaner. However, be careful, change/remove still full cans outside in a place that is "safe" - occasionally when they are taken off the gun, full cans don't close off properly!! You can get aerosol type foam cans but it is not very controllable.

No, a carpet fitter won't generally do skirting, but a hard floor fitter probably will, but again fitting a laminate floor is well within the capability of DIY. Skirt after laminate if possible, but before carpet.

 

[opps]

I agree that it sounds like condensation.

The "unit" prevented airflow behind the "unit" and allowed moist air to settle, on the party wall.

It may well be case that the the damp course on the party wall has failed. Additionally there may be a leaking pipe on the other side. Or your neighbour never turns on their heating

I have only seen such things happen on a hand few of occasions and in each case it was the damp proof course failing or a leak next door. That said, I am only a decorator.