Cold and damp homes

I have been in my 2 bed council flat for approx. 20 yrs. My children have grown up in this flat. I have not been able to afford to buy my own house.

My flat has suffered from damp, condensation and as a subsequence of the two moulds since moving into the property in1998.

I have had the council surveyors around on several occasions to investigate the primary cause. The flat has had a new kitchen and bathroom installed a few years ago as part of the Decent Homes Scheme, but this has not helped I have also had a moisture extractor system installed again without resolution of the problem.

Every spring my wife and I have to clean all affected walls and windows with bleach to remove the mould, which I believe is unhealthy.

I have been trying to bid for a larger more modern property for the past 8 years without success.

We need quality homes that are sustainable and low maintenance not cheap homes built quickly to .elevate the housing shortage in London.

I am in private rented. An oldish house built in the 1950's which has no insulation to the external walls, twenty year old double glazing which is draughty, plus a few single glazed unsulated external doors. Not enough radiators. I have an oil heater plugged in in the kitchen, the steel bath makes having a hot bath impossible, with the room being cold also as soon as you run a bath it goes cold!, the separate toilet has no heat and is freezing always! Poorly insulated attic. The house is freezing cold even when sometimes it is warmer outside! During the winter the only way we cope, as my whole family really feel the cold, is to keep the heating on 24/7 which costs about £70.00 in gas per month. If the heat goes off the house takes ages to warm up and also continuous heat keeps the mould at bay better. I use cheap humidifier containers in every room to stop moisture causing mould to grow. I have put tinfoil behind the radiators which helps stop heatloss, but I can't afford to put decent insulation in the loft. Have contacted various organisations who supposedly were offering insulation to all free or cheap - but never fit 'criteria'?! Our heating bills would be a lot cheaper if the house was properly insulated. The landlord company has hundreds of houses all in the same sorry state. 

Im renting too and my flat gets about 10c above the outside temperature. No gas either. Recently Landlord replaced my storage heater with a brilliant but very costly clay filled radiator with thermastat. Depressingly its costing a fortune as my flat will not stay above 21c so its constantly kicking in (via timer). So am having to switch it off to save money (£3.50 a day not including working hours, and its not that cold yet,). The floorboards are caving in and only secondary glazing drafts means its a pointless battle. My Landlord will not invest unless its proper broken (new heater due to storage heater blowing up last winter), left without hot water for months due to not wanting to pay the going rates. I imagine most renters who arnt rich have the same problems. Mines a 1980 purpose built, its shocking how cold it is. No real mould issues as its THAT drafty, issues inside wardrobes, window frames and bathroom of course but ive lived in rentals with mushrooms growing out of the walls so im grateful for that at least! The cheap dehumidifiers from poundland work a treat in wardrobes. The free insulation schemes are all but a distant memory, and working renters arnt entitled to anything anyway.

We have been using dehumidifiers in every room and they have certainly made a difference. We use the cheapest type, small ones bought from discount stores etc. They fill up with water as the crystals at the top of the container graually disappear and then you have to put new ones in their place. They usually last about a month or maybe six weeks, depending on the room. We do try to keep the place warm in the winter, we have no central heating but use two convector electric fires along with 2  halogen low energy heaters. We cannot afford to run the larger fires too much, but the halogen heaters are very good. The electricity has cost a lot of money in thi place, due to the immersion heater that we have to use for our hot water.

We're (me and my flatmate) renting a 1930's flat, our landlord doesn't like to spend much so we have a cheap weak boiler which means that the heating system is never warm enough even when it's open to it's full.
Also, seems like the double glazed windows we have here are from cheap quality, you can see it by the seam on the inner layer of the window.

There is no chance he is going to change any of these so we end up paying very high energy bills and using an extra electric heating in cold days.

I privately rent in an estate managed by City West Homes. A month ago they replaced the old windows with doubleglazed once. Winter is here and mould and condensation are back nevertheless. How is it possible? The workers on site already told me beforehand: these houses were very badly built in the first place. 

Unless there are very strict laws to building quality (and legal consequences to poor building) where insulation, protection against infestation, damp, rot, etc. is integral to each and every new build whether in private, domestic or industrial structures - this pathetic free-for-all nation of ours, where developers barely follow building rules or sidestep safety with the building-in of or with inferior materials (we have seen this in the tragedy of Grenfell and elsewhere where builders cut corners in order to make even more of a fast buck) we will continue to see the disgraceful degradation of building quality in the UK. 

Winter the damp gets worse as it is harder to air and dry the rooms out.

Double glazing most winter mornings has water running down the panes, even though i keep the window vents open,so a daily chore of wiping windows dry. Before the double glazing my windows used to drip with water and leave pools of water on the sill also annoyingly keeping me awake at night.

The worst places for damp are the box bedroom which is fine until it is used for sleeping in.!

Heating is expensive and the heating system does not adequatly keep the flat warm in colder weather.

In summer we boil when we heat the water up as several of the radiators do not have a turn of valve., and even when thermostat is set to lowest the rads still come on.

Yes, my flat is full of mould. It is terrible. I live in a council flat. The building has few structural problems, therefore, it is now over one year that there are scaffolding  around the building. The scaffolding are obstructing the windows, therefore, I cannot open them. During the summer it was unberable. In the winter the condensation, especially in the bathroom, is terrible. I have asked the council to move me since I can't take anymore, but I was told no. 

My daughter has to wear a fleece jacket/ long john /thicks socks/turtle neck jumper just to keep warm. her bedroom is damp and very cold in the winter.condensation on windows in my 3 bedroom flat,council had to put a fan in the bathroom because ceiling kept getting mouldy and black can't put the  heating on all day heating is not cheap.

Humn.....

The Mayor’s Energy for Londoners programme is aimed at improving energy efficiency and reducing fuel poverty in London. Programmes include:

- Warmer Homes (makes up to £4000 available per household for boiler replacement/repair, insulation or draught proofing, home visits primarily for fuel-poor owner-occupied homes).

- Homes Energy Efficiency Programme (HEEP) – retrofits existing homes owned by housing associations and borough.

What do you think of these programmes? Were you aware of them before? What more could the Mayor, or other bodies, do to address cold and damp homes?

Looks like the private rental sector has been forgotten yet again.

I just bought a flat in London, which has cost me 10 years of savings and it will take 25 years of mortgage. This is the first winter and I just found out that despite having double glazing and quite good walls and heating, the windows have condensation. But the cost of changing the windows is so huge that I can't face it now and probably in the next few years. I'm opening the windows often and doing as much as I can to avoid the condensation, but windows will need to be replaced soon. I lived scared with the idea they will go and I'll have no money to replace them.

In the course of my work I come across people with damp problems with people housed by councils. Councils seem reluctant to act, possibly because there is a shortage of alternative accommodation. In the private sector it seems more a case of renters accepting poor quality as the alternatives are too expensive. In both cases it is seems difficult to get any effective enforcement action.

I have experienced damp in the flat I’ve rented for the last 9 years. It improved significantly when our landlord put double glazing in and a fan in the bathroom but because of the lack of light in our bathroom, we still have problems with damp and mould on the walls. Our landlord didn’t get mould resistant (not sure that’s the right term!) paint which would have helped.

I live in a 2 bedroom council flat and the damp is terrible. I have double glazing windows but that does nothing to keep the heat in. There are days when its colder inside then outside and i keep me and my kid's wrapped in blankets. Heating is too costly and contributes to the mould.

My children's bedroom is so damp that mould grows behind the wardrobes. I have to get rid of wardrobes twice due to mould.