Dry rot in my lounge! Help!

withabix

celine wrote: »

We checked, and of course it's not covered. Our insurance company knows this kind of problems is likely to cost thousands, so they don't insure for that! Crafty!

It's not crafty, it's business sense.

I don't think you will find ANY insurer who will provide cover for dry rot in a standard off-the-peg policy.

Insurance generally covers things which happen by accident.

Dry rot isn't an accident. It's nature.

rdpro

Bungarm2001 wrote: »

Dry rot as you have probably found out by now can not only eat your wood, but brick and plaster too which means that the pros will sterilise all the surrounding areas of masonry.

...and they'll love to charge you ridiculous and unnecessary costs for the privilege! The majority of wood treatment companies are a rip-off, glad to see you seem to have found a 'true' pro, Celine


As this is a money-saving forum, I'd like to mention the most common treatment (normally jazzed up into 1000% markup treatments) - copper sulphate.

I'm not 100% sure it can still be bought over the counter, although this place ( http://www.reagent.co.uk/copper-ii-sulphate-5h2o-lrg.html ) seems happy to sell it in 'household' quantities. 500g would be enough to treat your entire house.

Copper salts are the traditional fungal killer (including dry rot) , much as cyanide is to humans, although copper salts are 'mostly harmless' to us. It only needs a tiny amount (about a teaspoon per litre is superstrength) to do the work. It can be mixed in with plaster to prevent any fungal infection, added to spirit bases to penetrate infected timber and brickwork, the lot. May save you a few grand...

edit: it's available on ebay.co.uk, half the price of the above link, so I'm 75% sure it's still legal to buy

Bungarm2001

rdpro...now that sounds like bluddy good advice!!! :T Never thought of something so simple...and so cheap too!!! From where I come from, farmers use copper sulphate in various forms for its fungicidal properties. I wouldn't mind betting you could buy a big tub of it from any half decent farmers suppliers and use it to kill off any spores from the offending beasties, and treat the walls to prevent even more taking up residence.

.....excellent...thanks for that...!! I'll keep a note of it for future reference :T

celine

Well, we started taking our floor boards off tonight, to air things out and get ready for the treatment to be done, and now we have uncovered another few surprises. It seems that maybe our plant is not to blame after all! We have uncovered a fresh puddle, coming out from behind the fireplace (which has a gas fire in it, and a back boiler behind it). We are thinking back boiler leak. Now if that is the case, and the leak caused the dry rot, does anyone think we are in a better position to make an insurance claim (although dry rot is named as not insured in our book)? Stupid question but should we call the insurers to investigate or a plumber, or another dry rot specialist?