Dirt Floor Cellar

Homes with dirt floors in the basement are more common than we realize.

Dirt floor cellar.

Checking the fruit and vegetable storage chart you ll see that most store best with fairly high humidity. On feb 16 2010. Cover the dirt floor with a layer of 10 mil plastic sheeting to serve as a vapor barrier which will keep moisture from seeping through the dirt and onto your wood floor. In our 1793 dirt floor cellar is a brick walled root cellar.

The way to prevent this is to keep the humidity at around 90 percent. Dirt basements are often found with large rocks uneven floors or a shelf of stone on one side. My husband has been digging out the dirt to put in concrete and found a layer of broken glass in the walled in storage room. Pamela s mechanicsburg pa.

The current floor is dirt. Overlap the bottom of the walls with two inches of the sheet edges raised upward along the wall s surface. Root cellar humidity keep things moist but not wet. You local basement systems dealer can waterproof basements and crawl spaces of all types including basements with dirt walls and floors large boulders or with stone walls.

Even if the root cellar is in your basement or right next to the house you ll have to put on shoes go to the root cellar possibly through cold snow maybe climb down a ladder and then lug the food back. Providing the square footage and condition of the floor is a great place to start unfortunately i can t give you a detailed cost estimate without knowing other factors. A vapor barrier will help keep the levels of moisture down in the basement which can either compromise the home s foundation or increase the humidity level in the basement. Other basements may have old fashioned stone or brick foundation walls.

Basement flooring solutions for a dirt floor written by doityourself staff. Yes that s pretty high. But a true root cellar will have a dirt floor which naturally holds moisture keeping the humidity elevated. Lay the sheets in rows across the dirt floor.

To ensure our content is always up to date with current information best practices and professional advice articles are routinely reviewed by industry experts with years of hands on experience. Installing a vapor barrier over a dirt floor basement is an instant way to block moisture and insects from entering the basement space. Lastly let us assume there is headroom when standing on the dirt floor. If the air in the root cellar is too dry it will draw moisture away from the produce and will result in shriveled produce all too quickly.

Let us assume there is a staircase from the main floor inside the house that leads into the basement. Was there a reason to line this area of the floor with glass maybe to keep the rodents from digging in. If you have a dirt or gravel floor in your root cellar you re in luck because the natural ground moisture will help keep your produce damp.