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Best sort of surface for cellar floor


Tancrède
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Rather to my excitement I unexpectedly find myself in the process of buying a new house, which I hope to take possession of towards the end of the year, and am enjoying making a few plans.

There is a useful little cellar, about 3 x 6 m, which has not recently been been used.  It has bare stone walls, a good ventilation shaft, and an earth floor.  The walls are entirely free of perceptible damp, and the material on the ground is as dry as pepper.  It is accessed from the interior of the house.

I very much want to get it back into use.

However, it is at least 500 years old, and accumulated debris has raised the floor level to an inconvenient extent, and it could probably do with digging out a bit.

The Question :  Having dug it out a bit (if this proves to be feasible and realistic), what sort of surface should the floor then have ?

I know that some people use plastic caillebotis on top of a leveled earth floor, and seem to find this satisfactory, and that some use gravel.

Or is it better to go for a solid screed of some kind?  And of so, what ?  Or does this have a malign tendency to trap damp, or to send it up the walls ?

My starting point is one of complete ignorance, so I would be very glad of any advice, or opinions.

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Avoid a solid floor, all the properties around me with terre battu floors seem very dry and the one that has a concrete floor resembles a swimming pool!

A friend was insistent an doing his sous-sol in concrete so as a compromise and an experiment to show me if it could work I convinced him to let me block pave it for him.

40cm brico-shed pavés auto-bloquantes over a sharp sand screed and it has worked better than I could ever have imagined, very clean always perceptibly dry but the cellar still breathes so good for wine storage, it also survived a flood caused by a burts pipe without any degradation.

Another great advantage was being able to carry the materials down by hand and them being dry, no pouring and shovelling of wet concrete.

Volume for volume the cheap pavés and sand cost less than concrete.

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Thank you very much for this excellent and informative reply.

Yes, pavés autobloquants appear to be a perfect solution  -  and, as you say, not expensive.  Are they pretty easy to cut with a bolster ?

And can you possibly give me a rule of thumb for deducing the amount of sand I shall need per metre sq, please  -  supposing that it is laid on a firm and pretty level earth base ?

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Don't see why you can't cut pavés auto-bloquantes with a bolster but when I had to do some last year a friend lent me a monster angle grinder.  The deal was that I had to change the disk that had become stuck fast on the spindle!

Anyway the expression relating to knives and butter springs to mind.  I'm sure you will arrange things so that the minimum number of bricks need cutting

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There is also such a thing as a 'plot' which is a small raised foot made of flexible material like neorpene or rubber which is placed on the floor and the tiles then put on top of it, fitting into little corners on the plot. The space under the tiles enables low level leakage of water to flow away and does not allow damp to rise to the tile level.

I used these very successfully many years ago in Belgium and had been thinking of using them here as I get tiny infiltrations when the soil outside is completely saturated after days of rain in the height of winter.

The French do know what they are as I have asked, but whether they are cost effective is another matter.
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[quote user="Gengulphus"]Thank you very much for this excellent and informative reply.

Yes, pavés autobloquants appear to be a perfect solution  -  and, as you say, not expensive.  Are they pretty easy to cut with a bolster ?

And can you possibly give me a rule of thumb for deducing the amount of sand I shall need per metre sq, please  -  supposing that it is laid on a firm and pretty level earth base ?



[/quote]

If the surface is fairly level and well compacted then you can go down to 40mm of sable riviére, its only going to be foot traffic so there wont be the problems caused by vehicles but it still pays to follow the correct procedure re any holes/depressions, build up and compact down to surrounding level with tout venant or the sand.

Using a depth of 50mm you will get 20m2 of coverage from 1m3 of sand.

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Thank you, Chancer.  That is very clear and helpful.

Since the pavés autobloquants offer the possibility of a greater degree of cleanliness than I had thought possible, this now makes me think further about the walls.  (They are vertical, and not a vault.)  These, being extremely ancient, continually shed the usual flakes of stone (limestone) and decomposing mortar.

Naturally I had been thinking of giving them a brisk going over with a yard-brush, but is there a way that I can stabilize the surface without compromising their present  -  apparently satisfactory  -   hydraulic performance ?

I was thinking about e.g. an application of size, or something of that kind  -  or would that prevent the transpiration of damp ?

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[quote user="Théière"]Natural limewash…[/quote]

Yes, you are quite right, and it was only sheer idleness on my part which prompted me to set aside this obviously correct solution and seek something simpler.

However, I was born sufficiently in the Old Days to have had the fun of slaking lime as a child and going through the rest of the grisly but fascinating procedure;  so I have a few of the skills in my portfolio, if only I can find where it is…

Thank you for the useful link.

Does anyone happen to know if chaule is obtainable in France ready-made ?

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Not 100% sure it was you but that same question was asked on another Forum.

Ours 4 cellars are made of either battered earth (cardboard gets destroyed in direct contact so there must be a tad moisture coming out), old cobbles (that was the old stables), concrete (to the exception of a ring of 3cm all along the peripherie making the cellar very dry) and battered earth covered in gravel (also ver dry and comfortable to walk on).

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