Dry rot or not???

[kingandy2nd]

Hi,

Just bought a fixer-upper house and found a little surprise in the crawl space under the house.

I think it's dry rot, but it's only affecting the dirt under the house and doesn't seem to be climbing the brickwork or have affected any of the joists (yet!).

I've fixed the gutter at the front of the property which was leaking badly and I've applied Cupranol 5* to the fungus on the floor and the walls and joists as a precaution.

Could someone please advise if this is dry rot, and if there's anything else I need to do? Also, will the fungus degrade, or will I physically need to remove it once it's dead? I'm just thinking that when I come to sell the house on I want to remove all evidence of it's existence otherwise it's bound to come up on the survey.

Thanks for your help!

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[^woody^]

The image is too near/large. It looks like the remains of a camp fire to me.

However, dry rot does not "affect dirt" or live on dirt. It feeds on the timber sap, and only lives on timber

 

[kingandy2nd]

Apologies for the poor picture. It's taken looking directly down at the dirt from a hole in the floor where I've lifted a board.

The fungus is the yellow bits in the picture.

I'll try and load a better picture later tonight.

 

[Nige F]

don`t think it`s dry rot ......that has tendrils like spiders web .......have a google there must be pictures of it about

 

[kingandy2nd]

Hi again,

Here's another picture from a wider angle of the floor. There's lots of rubble down there which doesn't help. To put the picture in perspective there's a 22mm pipe and a 2.5mm cable running across the left of the picture.

It doesn't look like any dry rot on pictures from google... does anyone have any ideas of what it is??

 

[JohnD]

I wonder if it might be crystalised mineral deposits.

Take one out and scrape off the deposit, see if it will burn or dissolve in hot water.

Is there oversite concrete under that rubbish?

Take a pic showing joists and underside of the floorboards to see if there are signs of rot.

 

[kingandy2nd]

Hi JohnD,

Thanks for your quick reply.

I've tried your suggestions - it didn't burn, but did dissolve instantly in very hot water leaving a milky looking solution.

I don't think there's anything but dirt under the rubble.

Here's some pics of the wooden joists I've just taken - the second one looks a bit worrying to me because of the white colouring of the wood where it meets the brickwork.

 

[noseall]

the white deposits are what is left over from bricklayers snots when the place was first built.

 

[Joe Malone]

I can see no sign of dry rot here. Dry rot (Serpula Lacrymans) feeds on the lignin and cellulose in wood and can remain active with timber moisture contents of between 20 and 35%. A simple test which an electronic moisture meter will tell you whether the timber is at risk of a dry rot infestation. In the main dry rot consists of a Mycelium which throws out feeder strands called Hyphae and contrary to what a previous contributor said although the hyphae don't feed on masonry they have the ability to spread and grow through inert materials such as brickwork. This is why dry rot is so dangerous, it can lie dormant for years on inert materials until such a time as optimum environmental conditions are introduced for growth. Shock (usually the introduction of light) can induce the growth of a fruiting body or sporophore. These sporophores eject hundreds of millions of spores into the atmosphere every day each looking for a new place where optimum conditions will be ideal for growth.
These spores look like rust coloured dust and the sporophore looks like this:
http://www.buildingpreservation.com/images/fbody.jpg

The mycelium looks like this:

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...v=/images?q=dry+rot+mycelium&gbv=2&hl=en&sa=G

Once you've had a dry rot outbreak you have to accept that you'll never eradicate it, you can only induce environmetal conditions whereby the fungus lies dormant. Primary treatment measures should always be to increase ventilation and promote rapid drying.

Joe