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Mould at the back of our kitchen cabinets
Hello all, so in our kitchen we are getting mould at the back of our wooden cabinets and in the bottom of the draws etc. the kitchen is a modern-ish extension (before we bought) and done with I think concrete. We knew there was a damp problem in this room, and we knocked back to brick and lime plastered (although in hindsight probably not worth it!) we have a built-in kitchen so I guess this is trapping the moisture and not allowing any airflow then creating mould. We were very new to this when we did this so wouldn’t have got a built in kitchen if we knew, but here we are. I was thinking of drilling air holes through the backs of the cabinets to allow airflow and see if this helps. Has anyone got any tips?
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5 Replies
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Built in kichens can be fine but you really need to offset from the wall ideally 70-100mm to get airflow behind and leave a gap all along the top of the plinth so that the air can flow under the cupboard and up. If your units are hard up to the wall at the back and not the sort that are built with a service void (such as the DIY Kitchen ones) then you can easily cut down your plinth by 10mm or so right along it shouldn’t show unless you are lying on the floor but not really noticeable if cut neatly all along. Put the gap at the top not floor level. If hard to the wall with absolutely no space behind the best might be to remove the backs (you should be able to do from inside an reinsert a ply back on the cupboards set inside a bit further, you dont need this to go behind drawers and you will need to cut vents in the base behind the new panel.
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I think your mistake here was mixing modern and traditional.
Many thousands of people up and down the country have built in kitchens in old houses, that are pre cavity walls but do not have damp behind the the cabinets. It works if there no leaks, the property is well maintained, adequately heated, gap between cabinet and wall. Most people then have damp proof courses and airbricks etc. Now this is not the group to advocate for that or suggest it. With lime plaster it effectively absorbs moisture and drys out. So you would need to have a freestanding kitchen from everything I read when we recently did our kitchen.
It is not true for anyone to say old houses with modern built in kitchens all have damp as they don’t. But it’s probably best to say they maybe more liable to have a problem,
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I would expect the provision of ventilation holes to have little or no benefit . There is nothing to move the air, to make it circulate.
If you measure the air temperature in the kitchen and again behind the cupboards I would expect behind to be several degrees cooler.
You could install a fan to move the air behind the cupboards, this will raise the temperature slightly, but also introduce more moisture from the kitchen to that cold space.
Personally, I would install some form of heating behind the cupboards.
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Thank you all for your advice. I am going to inspect over the weekend and see what ventilation I can create without getting any professional work in – we’ve run out of money now! This is also the only room without a radiator as we need to repair the wall to hold it. Once this is sorted i think the problem will be manageable. Thanks again.
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You’ve answered your own question. Can you manage without wall mounted cupboards? Or at least move them away from the wall leaving a decent vented air gap?
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