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| Timber Treatment |
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Dry Rot |
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Dry Rot is often confused with dried out wet rot, but it is potentially much more serious. Moisture is needed for dry rot to get started, but once established, it can travel through masonry and even concrete, to find some more timber to feed on.
Guaranteed treatment depends on successfully removing the source of moisture and all affected materials, before treating the area and reinstating the items removed. It is often necessary to improve on the design or construction of the original item, perhaps by improving sub floor ventilation, or isolating timber joists from the walls. Non Guaranteed control treatments can be carried out instead, and these depend on controlling the local environment to ensure that the conditions in which Dry Rot flourishes, do not arise.
There is only one dry rot fungus, Serpula lacrymans. Wet rot is more easily treated by removing the source of moisture and replacing defective timbers. Unlike Dry Rot, wet rot will not travel beyond the point of the moisture, into dry timber. With dry rot, there is always some fungal growth, although this is likely to be out of sight. With wet rot, there is often no fungal growth, although there are one or two wet rots that look similar to dry rot. There are a number of wet rot fungi.
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Woodworm |
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Woodworm is the colloquial name for a woodboring insect often referred to as Common Furniture Beetle, Latin name: Anobium punctatum. There are a number of woodboring insects, all of which, like us, have their favourite diets. Death watch beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, for example, likes old woods, like Oak, that have already been attacked by a woodrotting fungus. The powder post beetle, Lyctus, likes newer hardwoods and the woodboring weevil, Euophryum confine, likes damp softwood. The house longhorn beetle, Hylotropes bajulus, is rare and in England is usually only found in southern counties.
Treatment of woodboring insects is by interupting their life cycle, which varies from one beetle to another.
The adult beetle, Anobium punctatum lays up to 60 eggs after mating, and injects these into the open pores of the timber. It naturally prefers soft wood, sawn rather that planed, because of the open pore structure. These eggs hatch out into larvae which then chomp up and down within the timber for typically three years, pupating into an adult beetle just below the surface before emerging at around Easter time. The adult beetle dies after laying the eggs and are normally alive for only a six week period. Unless it has been introduced into a house in some affected furniture or firewood, it is unlikely to attack timber within a property that is less than sixty years old.
To treat floors, we look at the potential flight area underneath. At first floor level, this is usually confined to one floor, but at ground floor level, it may be possible for the adult beetles to fly from one room to another. Similarly in a roof, the adult beetle may fly anywhere, jot just where some holes have been found. Under the stairs is another common place to find this beetle. To provide a guaranteed treatment, we would normally treat the whole of a common flight area. Treatment is effected by applying an insecticide to the surface of the timber, which kills off the beetle as it emerges, and also prevents any visiting beetle from laying its eggs. Beetles can emerge for three years after treatment.
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Is this the right treatment?
