Mouldy question (From York Press)

Yep, you said it " Are council houses poorly built and therefore more prone to damp?"
They use the cheapest materials possible. Added to that the poorest members of society tend to be in local authority accommodation and can`t afford to whack the heating up. So there we have a recipe for mould and damp.

Generally speaking damp (more specifically mould) is caused by condensation. The first reason this will form is due to poor insulation. Solid brick walls as common with a lot if York's housing stock are not a good insulator. Lack of ventilation comes next and this is often lacking due to measures taken to keep the heat in; blocking chimney's closing vents and not opening windows. Then you have the occupier. Every person living in the property will increase the amount of water vapour produced due to breathing/sweating/s
howering/cooking/dry
ing clothes etc.
In summary it's probably got very little to do with the property itself. We live in a Victorian terrace and do get mould unless we are careful to minimise steam when cooking, use a dehumidifier when drying clothes inside if its not possible to hang them outside, making sure the bathroom is well ventilated after showering and opening windows to ventilate. When we have people round we notice we get much more condensation and so if we lived in a smaller place or had more people living here the likelyness of mould would be increased.
We own the house so really care about the fabric of the building and not getting mould, if we didn't I'm sure we would have mould in the property as we wouldn't make the extra effort to keep it at bay.

Mould is caused by the occupier in almost all cases. The only problem is once a property has mould it will re-appear very easily unless it is properly removed. I've been to many old houses that don't have mould due to the care if the occupier and also many new, well insulated, well heated properties riddled with mould because of the occupiers actions.

It's a no-win situation with condensation-driven mould: do you keep windows/vents closed to keep the heat in that your paying several hundred/thousand pounds a year to foreign energy giants for, only to have mouldy window surrounds and walls; or do you open windows and watch your money figuratively go flying out the window along with your heat?

I believe that a dehumidifier is cheaper to run than heating when the aim is simply to dry the place, and that one dehumidifier can pull in the moisture from several rooms.