Is this wet rot or dry rot ?

topcat105

I noticed rising damp in the corner of the living room (terraced house party wall).

It seems to be coming from under the stairs so I took off the wooden board which hides the underside of the stairs.

The 2 wooden "struts" either side are rotten from the base up.

Is this dry rot , wet rot , woodworm or something else.

Can I just replace the affected wood or do I need to get an expert in ?

TIA for any advice.

grumpy_codger

Looks like woodworm to me. In this case you need to treat the adjoining timber and the replacement.

WIAWSNB

Surely connected with the presence of the damp?

Obviously the first thing to address will be the source of damp itself. It's a very defined tide mark - could it be from a leak rather than ground-rising?

When did you notice it? Can you say when it wasn't there?

In essence, tho', the repair is to cut away all the rotted timber and any damaged brick/mortar, coupled with removing some of the solid timber beyond this tobesuretobesure, soaking everything in killer (dry,wet,worm), and replacing the missing bits, ensuring anything structural is restored.

Section62

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6684463/is-this-wet-rot-or-dry-rot

I noticed rising damp in the corner of the living room (terraced house party wall).

How old is the house? Do the external walls have a DPC? Are the floors suspended or solid?

I'd say rot rather than worm, but that's only from what I can see in the pictures. Regardless, some of the wood looks untreated, so you'll want to treat it all with a wood preserver (including insecticide) while you've got access to the whole area.

Bigphil1474

From what I can remember - We had what we were advised were weevils in our old house cellar, attracted by the damp conditions. Looks a bit like wood worm but we got a damp company in to do a survey and they were clear it wasn't. We improved ventilation and the damp improved, weevils died off.

Agree with above - need to sort out the cause of the damp, then do the repairs. If it's the party wall, speak to the neighbours as they may have the same. When we had those works done, we also had the garden wall to one side cut back away from the house as it was causing some dampness on the party wall. Not as bad as yours looks though.

jimi_man

That doesn't look like woodworm at all. We have woodworm holes in our workbench (long since treated but the holes remain) and they are small dotted holes all over the wood. I'd say that's almost certainly caused by damp.

Looking at the first picture of the tide mark up the wall, that looks exactly like what we had in our last house two years ago. In our case it was caused by a leaking radiator pipe under the (concrete) floor which was traced very quickly by a leak detection guy, but obviously there can be many causes - bathrooms, faulty guttering, roof issues as water does tend to travel! I'd be looking at something like that first of all.