I have a gravel path (actually drain rock so larger) over landscape cloth. It is only about 3 years old and I know I will have to decide if I would rather use some kind of screen/wire to hold it away from the soil in the future, but for now I have a super thin layer of the rock so moving it to replace is mostly an one day pain in the rear. I get a few weeds in the stuff that lands on the rock and ends up on the weed cloth, but not that hard to pull a few weeds here and there. The walk goes right by the house so I don't want to use bark-fear of adding more termites, the gravel is hot enough, concrete would cook us and I can't see spending money on watering lawn (besides part it is over a leech field that I don't want to add that much water too anyway) I will probably start at one end with some kind of walkable ground cover, just have not had it that high on the to-do list to start on that yet. Living in Santa Barbara, the no water cacti gardens over lava rock front yards were common. Back in the day everyone seemed to want to have one. Guess if having painful to touch lava rock was not unfriendly enough adding cacti made it better..... I can top all of your plastic bits woes. My dad LOVED using black plastic. Plastic soil bags, Yellow heavy plastic.. grocery store plastic veggie bags. Perfect for killing weeds. right. He would put something on it to weight it down so it would not blow off, but over time leaves would fall and next thing you know, the plastic was gone. So he would add a new layer. After awhile he discovered that maybe picking up old sheets of vinyl might last longer. Of course that was harder to find. Then he hit on the mother load of free material to lay down on the yard. And even better, he could lay it upside down where he wanted people to walk and it would add traction on that slippery clay. And it would not blow away. Used carpet. Fun is trying to dig through loopy strands of carpet (the backing as long since vanished for the most part leaving miles of plastic/manmade yarn for you to pull. Hitting a layer of vinyl that pulls in up small rotten squares, Just to find layers of "lasagna gardening" gone wrong with multiple plastic layers. My point is to think about what you might end up doing in the future and just how hard it will be to undo what you are working on if you change your mind.

Just be sure to use a Silane/Siloxane Water repellent. I foolishly used silicone many years ago and only succeeded in creating brick spalling. Here is a link that might be useful: Silane/Siloxane Water repellent.

One of my concerns about putting a vapor barrier down on the dirt floors in my old house's cellar has to do with the risk of creating a super-saturated zone right at the foot of my dry-laid walls (some rubble, some much more carefully selected and laid, but all w/o more than chinking mortar.) The vapor barrier, in my view, is there to stop the inexorable rising of water vapor from the soil. (It rises due to constantly changing atmospheric pressures that no one can do anything about.) Blocking it at the cellar-floor surface level won't stop it rising, but it could channel it all outward to the edges of the barrier. If the barrier is tightly sealed to walls (as it ought to be) then where does all that accumulated water vapor go? It seems to me it will create a lot of sogginess in the soil at a very bad place: where the foundation of my house rests on what I assume was undisturbed soil at the time of construction c 1845-ish. I think it's important to differentiate between free water that comes in during periods of high soil water or the result of poor local drainage from roofs, flooding, etc, and moisture that comes from rising soil moisture vapor. The free water part may be containable, managable, or mitigated, but soil moisture vapor is probably not something you can stop. Moisture arising from the soil in very old houses may be a natural phenomenon that we have lately defined as a problem, or that has become problematic because of material changes we have made to our buildings by installing central heat, insulation, double-glazing and even running water. It may also be that our expectations have changed to cause something previously deemed "normal" to be seen as a problem in need of action to eliminate. Before there was electricity and air-conditioning technology I doubt that people were much pre-occupied with removal of air-borne humidity by dehumidification. But the fact that we can do it, may now make us feel that we have to do it. I also disagree with the notion that keeping cellar rooms closed up during the warm months is the best course of action. I do see the logic that keeping warm, summer, moisture-laden air away from the soil-cool stones of a foundation avoids condensation on the walls. But I am less concerned with condensation coming from warm-air atmospheric moisture, than with venting soil moisture vapor to the outside of my building envelope. Old people around here who lived in old houses like mine have told me of the careful attention they paid to opening up the cellar and airing it out after the winter. Since most of them lived and worked on the farms they were at home to attend to this and paid close attention to the direction of the wind so to maximise the flow-through pathways by opening different windows, doors, etc. I practise this as much as possible and it results in a dryer cellar, even though I still get some condensation on the walls, especially in the early Spring. In the years when I can pay the most attention to active cellar ventilation, my cellar - and consequently the rest of my first floor - stay the driest. But it often takes multiple changes during the course of a day, and I have to have my whole outdoor cellar stairway open all the time (during the day, it's generally closed at night to avoid dew-laden night air), which many people couldn't or wouldn't do out of fear of intruders. My cellar walls show evidence of multiple layers of white-wash (quick-lime and water). This is an effective preventive, curative and aesthetic disguise for dampish stones. It does nothing to reduce humidity in the air (adds to it for a few days as it dries off), but it makes the cellar seem less grungy. I struggle with this issue, a good deal, because I think a lot of the best-advice from old house "experts" may not be the best for the building's long-term survivabality. Info dump: My house is located in northern, NY. Foundation as described above, otherwise timberframed, two-story, wooden structure with its original plaster walls intact. Wall cavities are mostly filled with two separate layers of backplastering on wooden lath. Two layers of 5/4" X 10" T&G sheathing with clapboards nailed on top. Slate roof. Still no central heat, though now only two modern, more-effective stoves rather the original 4-6. Electrified (but not in every room) just before WW II; minimal indoor plumbing installed in 1960. In short, a oddly long-term survival of 19th technology, which I am slow to alter. If you're going to put vapor barrier down, and going to the trouble of sealing it properly, you should use material specifically intended for the purpose, not construction poly. I haven't solved this problem to my satisfaction, yet. Lately, I have been thinking that I should undertake a more active course of observation (recording indoor and outdoor temps, humidity and wind direction and speed) along with a program of trial openings and closing to gather better information to form a more thought-out moisture vapor reduction program. (I expect this was all empirically known a hundred years ago, but even old timers now have forgotten the details, alas.) This summer has been dryer than normal so perhaps this would be a propitious time to start. There is a guy, an engineer, (located in eastern MA, I think) who owns an old house and he has basically sealed up his entire cellar walls and floors from within. I'm drawing a blank on his name, but a frequent poster, Worthy, often posts links to his work so if you search for Worthy's posts on this forum you should turn up the link. I have read this guy's writing on his website, but remain unconvinced that it's what I should do with my old building. I don't think he's a crank, or anything - and he may be right - but what he does is essentially non-reversible. That irreversability is what's stopping me. L.

Just wanted to give an update on this since so many of you had ideas on what the issue could be. Since the last post we just last week had the drywall removed, new drywall installed, a new cabinet and hooked everything back up. It was under the builders impression that the issue was still caused by the constant fan. However, shortly after the last post we discovered that our Septic Tank was never turned on. It began overflowing into the backyard, which is right behind the side of the home with the moisture issue. We were concerned about why the septic pump alarm never went off and that was because it was never connected by the electrician. We moved in last November so it was off for that whole time. We never noticed back up toilets or any odors or even the toilets making bubbly noises. We got that hooked up correctly and it started working. Last night when I was cleaning my sons room I noticed the edge of the wall on the hardwood flooring had water stains that were solid black. We have the Chesapeake Bay Gray Fog Engineered Hardwood flooring thru-out our whole first floor except for the wet areas where we have tile. The black spots we noticed are the same spots that had high moisture readings when we noticed the mold issue. The builder said the two issues werent related and that we would deal with the moisture after we took care of the mold issue. Since I have looked into all of these possible solutions, my only idea of what could have caused all this is the flashing on the home. It looked correct when they removed the brick on the side of the home but it has to have gaps in places that allowed water to leak in. the water spots are about every two feet away from each other in my youngest sons room and we found one spot in the dining area which is on the front of the home and then in the bedroom next to the bathroom that had the mold. Thank you for all of your help researching and figuring it all out.