The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
The Care Of Wood Work In The Home
The fact that dry-rot is such a hidden peril is its worst feature. Unless you are very lucky, by the time it has broken through into the daylight of a room it has already traveled in the dark far from the original source of infection, ravaging all the timber it has met on its route.
The fruit bodies of the rot fungus can give off many millions of the rusty red spores per minute for days on end and each of these 1/5000-inch-long spores which blows or is carried by clothing, insects or rodents to a suitably damp piece of timber, situated in the right conditions, will germinate. The germinated spores send out small roots, known as hyphae, into the wood. The hyphae build up in layers of grey-white 'cotton-wool'. At a certain stage, dirty-looking matted grey strands are thrown out and from these develop the water conveying tissues, which are literally living hose-pipes, which convey the moisture to sound timber and soften it up for destruction. At maturity, the hideous-looking 'pancake' fruit bodies are produced, which give off the reproduction spores. These fruiting bodies are brick-red in the centre and rimmed with lilac, sometimes tinged with white or yellow. Presence of fruit bodies and spores show that the rot is well established and of long standing. Treatment
Panic never helps, but dry-rot is good reason for alarm and quick, vigorous and thorough action. Half measures are a waste of time and money.
When you discover the outbreak, remember that you are probably meeting the trouble at its furthest point of penetration. To eradicate it you must trace it back along a dark route to its possibly quite distant source. You must also remove or rectify the original cause, destroy all infected timber on the route, sterilize for a considerable distance all round it and replace infected timber with new, which has been treated with a fungicide. If you feel that the job is too much for you to tackle, then call in a dry-rot treatment specialist or an experienced builder. Whether you do the job yourself or call in an expert, the following is the course which should be followed:
1. Open up the woodwork from the point of discovery to the place of origin of the outbreak.
2. Cut off the source of dampness, restore or install ventilation if possible, rectify the trouble and take steps to ensure that there can be no recurrence.
3. Whilst (1) and (2) are being carried out and before deliberately disturbing the fungus, any fruit bodies met with should be sprayed with fungicide to prevent them sending out spores. Spores already thrown out should be similarly sprayed. This may be described as the antiseptic treatment prior to the surgery.
