Treating dry rot in London - ££££s?

[theyoungvisiter]

We've just got the survey back on a house we were hoping to buy, and the kitchen and back extension is riddled with dry rot, so much so that they are going to make the mortgage conditional on treatment.

Does anyone have any experience of this? Any idea what kind of costs we're looking at?

We're going to get quotes obviously, but can't do much until we get the printed version of the survey - at the moment we've only had an unofficial chat.

bump?

anyoooooooone!!!!

Surely I can't be the only person with dry rot

[sobs into pillow]

ok, last despairing bump, and then I'm off to weep into my G&T

It depends on how far the dry rot has got - it can mean removing timbers such as joists if it has really got a grip. It might just be a tiny bit that needs taking out and the rest has to be sprayed. Unfortunately, it's not easy to tell until all the floors etc are up.

It isn't a particularly difficult job to replace joists (I'm assuming you have a timber suspended floor but the rest of the house is brick) and they're not very expensive so it shouldn't cost that much but, of course, it means pulling up the floor which causes lots of superficial damage and you will need new flooring afterwards, I expect. Spraying always seems to cost several hundred pounds for not very much work at all.

oh thank you for the reply!

[pathetic sobs]

It seems from the report to be mainly in the walls? The main timber the surveyor could see affected was the window frames. But he said that the spores or whatever those stringy things are, can travel through the walls so these would need stripping back too.

Arg, I hate hate hate moving.

If it's window frames, it's not a biggy - just get new ones. Didn't know it could affect walls but was sad intrigued enough to investigate. This from wikipedia:

In certain buildings, particularly those with solid 9 inch (or greater) brickwork and those built using lime mortar and flint (commonly known as bungeroosh in the Sussex area), dry rot has been known to travel through and along the wall surface behind plaster and render. It is therefore recommended that where dry rot is found, plaster and wall coverings should be stripped back to a metre past the infestation in all directions, and the whole area treated. However, given that dry rot attacks only wet timber, common sense should dictate that plaster need not be removed where there is no timber or any timber is dry (outside the zone of wetting that caused the outbreak). Identifying the source of water and allowing the affected timbers to dry will kill dry rot, as it is a fungus and requires water as all fungi do.

Oh well it's certainly not 9 inches thick and/or flint and lime!

Phew. Should have known the surveyor was over-egging it. They always manage to take the shine off the place somehow, don't they?

The surrounding wall is very damp though, so perhaps that's what the surveyor was worrying about, maybe he was meaning get the damp treated...?

Oh well, here's hoping that the final outcome isn't too bad.

Weeeeeell, we had two lots of it in our old flat - it's fairly common here in Glasgow, as the old tenements are built of solid sandstone, so no cavity - the rain (of which we have much) gets in and if it doesn't stop raining (which it doesn't, ever), the stone doesn't get a chance to dry out properly before the timbers become affected. We had it in the plaster work and the timbers and one lot involved removing about a metre around one corner of the sitting room (by window). But treating it involved stripping everything right back in that area, from the top of the block to the bottom (four flats), so all the plaster (including the cornicing), the timbers, the floorboards, the lot, and replacing the timber with pre-treated timber.

My sitting room floor was more or less ruined . My lovely decorator made a reasonable job of staining and varnishing the replacement floorboards, but the join was very obvious, because the rot people cut the boards they removed square rather than taking out whole floorboards. So, depending on your floor, it could mean replacing either a large section or a whole floor if you want it to look perfect.

the other lot wasn't so traumatic, but involved removing the shower and replacing it. Mortgage companies hate dry rot, so be warned.

Oh, and the timber thing depends on the age and structure of the house - ours was old Victorian lath and plaster, so the plaster has a kind of timber frame behind it, and the dry rot gets into that, which is why the plaster needed replacing.

Thanks for the other side of the coin midnightexpress!

How much did it all cost? (if that's not a rude question!)

In a every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining kind of way, the decor at least is not a problem as the house is an ex-rental so the decor would have to be completely redone anyway. That's the least of my worries tbh

Oh now you're asking. I've obviously wiped it from my memory. The second lot we got on our insurance, so we were able to move out for a couple of weeks to rented accommodation. Can't remember what the difference was from the first lot - I think perhaps because it had been caused by water leak damage rather than just plain old rain? Anyway. The first lot I can't remember, but it wasn't quite as horrific as I'd expected, iirc - the cost was obviously shared between the four flats, which helped, but maybe 700 quid, or thereabouts, I think.

Oh good! Well hopefully if you've wiped it from your memory it can't have been too traumatic?!

We're having a specialist survey done which will hopefully give us more info about the extent, though apparently it is in some of the skirting boards which is a shame, as it probably means the floor in those rooms will have to go.