Q. How would I know if my property has Dry Rot?

Submitted by: PB 

A. An established and virulent dry rot attack will very quickly make its prescence obvious though the uninitiated may not know or recognise what they are seeing or looking at. Dry rot is a fungus and like all fungi it requires moisture to germinate and sustain itself.

Therefore, if you wanted to carry out a limited inspection of a property for dry rot it is usually best to start outside. Make an out line sketch plan of the property and then mark on that sketch where all rain water down pipes, hopper heads, flat roofs, balconies, protruding ledges, defective gutters, overflow pipes - in fact anything that could possibly be responsible for moisture penetration to take place - either now or in the past.

Armed with this go inside and look at all timbers adjacent to all of the items you have noted where mosture penetration might have taken place. Warped, shrunken and split architraves,skirting boards and window boards are usually the first obvious indication. A trick is to shine a torch light along the length of skirting or architrave. This will cause shadows revealing shrinking or cuboidal cracking that may be about to break the surface. Look at the masonry surface behind rain water pipes and if you see dark 'wisker like' growths these are  the remnants of old moss and algae growth which means a considerable leak has occured at some time in the past at that point - look very carefully inside.

In a mature property be suspicious of new joinery adjacent to areas of potential moisture penetration. This may be an indication of problems in the past and without opening up it would not be possible to establish how thorough any remedial work may have been or if structural repairs are outstanding.

Dry rot has to have a cause which is moisture usually caused by a leak or defect. No moisture means no dry rot. Dry rot will not spontaneously erupt without a cause so do not panic. Keep your property in a good state of repair, repair all defective gutters, leaks etc immediately. A £40 gutter repair now could save you a £4000 dry rot repair later!