Originally Posted by
stut
I wonder if it's the same phenomenon as in the UK, and a simple lack of ventilation. Newer housing stock is significantly less draughty - great from an environmental/cost point of view in a colder climate, but the ventilation (extractor fans, etc) that gets built in is pathetic - not just in the bathroom, but in the kitchen, and wherever you dry clothes (oh, for the space to put a tumble dryer...)
People are also less willing to air out the house on a regular basis, particularly when it's cold - and the heating is on more than previously. It seems the norm to leave it on overnight - something I wouldn't consider and would have been anathema to my parents, even in a draughty old house where I used to enjoy waking up to the sight of frost on the inside of the windows, and knew the route to walk to the stairs with the hot water pipe running underneath!
A £35, table-top dehumidifier can work wonders. But there still needs to be a certain air flow.
As for the wet rooms - I assume there's some kind of lining? I notice that, at least in the old Danish apartment blocks, they do seem to be all located next to the staircase - perhaps there is some kind of stone base? Certainly in Southern Europe, you often see cold rooms that appear to have concrete or stone floors.
In old Danish apartments, the allowed piping set-up for water is commonly quite restrictive and thus you're often not allowed to have the kitchen and bathroom "out of line" (and wherever you want to have it) from other units in the same building -- no matter how much money you want to spend on a renovation of the apartment. Building codes in Scandinavia are a beast, and yet the problems in term of mold/mildew seem to be worse than ever for newer housing stock than for older housing stock -- despite bathrooms with windows being more common to newer housing stock than older housing stock in the region. Ventilation systems and ventilating practices are definitely part of the issue, but there seems to be more to it than just that.
I've been having some really interesting exposure to renovating/constructing residences in the region, and I must say this: beside the interest rate environment and labor cost environment, regulatory burden is a major reason the housing prices are as high as they are and yet the quantity and quality of the housing stock more questionable. And I include the mold/mildew problem as part of a quality of housing stock issue.
For Danish bathrooms in older apartment blocks, having a concrete/stone/brick base underneath the floor of the wetroom bathrooms wouldn't surprise me. The single bathrooms in many of these places do indeed tend to be close to the stairwell. In older Danish apartments, it's usually the kitchen and bathroom floors that don't squeak as much. Housing on a common budget is often a case of "choose your poison". In this case, it seems to be mold/mildew (in not so old buildings) or squeaky bedroom/living room floors (in old buildings) .
