I'm considering building a bathroom in the basement, currently, I only have a loose shower cabin which isn't particularly fun. The planned location is in a corner between an exterior wall and an interior wall, with a wood storage on the other side. Walls are concrete.
What I'm wondering about is how to handle the moisture barrier, primarily against the exterior wall.
The house was built in 1937, moisture travels through the concrete, evaporates on the inside, and is vented out. This has worked for 70 years, even though I run a dehumidifier in the summer since I stopped using wood for hot water. The basement is dry and nice.
Should there be a moisture barrier at all? What happens if you just plaster the wall and put tiles on? Can the moisture start moving upwards into the wooden wall?
What I'm wondering about is how to handle the moisture barrier, primarily against the exterior wall.
The house was built in 1937, moisture travels through the concrete, evaporates on the inside, and is vented out. This has worked for 70 years, even though I run a dehumidifier in the summer since I stopped using wood for hot water. The basement is dry and nice.
Should there be a moisture barrier at all? What happens if you just plaster the wall and put tiles on? Can the moisture start moving upwards into the wooden wall?
This has been discussed a lot on the forum. But in summary, avoid moisture barriers, except precisely in the shower corner and around the floor drain. That usually is the most sensible compromise. If there is a very large moisture addition through the wall, one might consider skipping the moisture barrier entirely.
But I can't see any advantages at all to doing it that way. It becomes much more troublesome, more expensive, and also a bit of a risky construction. Simply tiling directly on the basement wall, with a bit of moisture barrier in the shower, is essentially risk-free and works perfectly well.mats_o said:
I know - but the risk is that you solve one problem and create another. Tiles on the wall won't be damaged by moisture, what I'm afraid of is that the moisture that currently evaporates into the air will migrate into the wooden wall, along with shower moisture, and of course, the shower will be placed next to the outer wall... Otherwise, the solution with plaster + tiles directly on the concrete seems fairly sensible, as you don't introduce anything that can mold or rot. I'm also considering building the new walls with bricks, just to avoid using any organic material that can cause issues.mats_o said:
Then we have the floor and the ceiling... The ceiling is wood, should you attach plastic + drywall, just drywall, or something else?
The floor is just a thin crust directly on the ground, it will be dug up for the plumbing and other things anyway, so I'm leaning towards pouring a proper foundation while I'm at it.