I bought an old house that had been a forclosure, so I know little about it, except what I can see. It is 2 bedrooms and 1 bath, about 40 years old. I could see it needed a new roof and gutting inside and replacing all the interior. I do this once a year or so as part of the way I make a living. I replaced the shingles, then ripped out the carpeting and vinyl flooring in the kitchen and diningroom. It has a full basement that the previous owners had finished very poorly, so I ripped all the walls and carpet from the basement. It is raining here finially, so I spent the day yesterday cleaning out the basement. I left the doors open to air out as these folks must have sit in the house and smoked 24 hours a day. When I came up to get some lunch I noticed a wet spot on the floor in the livingroom floor. My first thought was my roofing leaked, but on checking that wasn't the problem. I checked everywhere and there is no dripping and it wasn't from water blowing in. there is no plumbing near it, you will have to trust me when I say it isn't from any outside source, cause I spent an hour checking everything. When I pulled up the carpet and padding, I noticed there was a stain on the underlayment from something and it smells somewhat like urine so they probabally had a dog. The carpet padding was stuck to the underlayment at the stains and when I scraped the padding up with a spade it left some dusty residue on those spots.
I'm trying to determine if the dusty padding/ dog urine residue could somehow draw moisture from the air and make a damp spot, or am I going nuts, or what.
The spots that were damp were the same spots that were stained, and they are in the area of the highest traffic in the house and are only under places that had carpet. The areas that had vinyl flooring are on the same substrate and were closer to the open doors show no signs of dampness.
Anybody got any ideas?
Later, Nat
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