Forget your favorite shiitake, chanterelle, oyster mushrooms or Portobello.
This is the dreaded Wet Rot not a mushroom on wood . If you’re a house owner you never want to see this.
The mushroom looking thing is what’s called the “fruiting body” of the organism. It’s so much like the triffids in war of the world’s it’s scary.
Basically what happens is that just like a mushroom a spore gets blow through the air until it lands on some wood that’s damp. It could be in your house under your floor, in a beam or like this in a dead tree. It starts to grow and soon eats all the available food near it and then sends out superfine tentacles all around. They are looking for more damp timber.
Unlike wet rot which has to be wet all the time (like a fence post driven into the ground) Dry Rot can cope with dry periods. Which is a problem because it will keep on sending out these tentacle’s to attack more wood as the weather turns wet again it grows. You can see how they have invaded this cross-section of wood.
The organism is eating the wood and as a result it makes it weak so that joists and beams can collapse because they have no strength. When a piece of wood attacked by dry rot is cut open it looks like it has been burnt (not coloured black) a little like a charred piece of wood.
The other bad news is that this little monster can travel up walls behind plaster to new sources of food. It’s no good knocking off the mushroom part because the main part of the organism is inside the timber.
The good news is that it can be treated.
Call Castelo Construction 00351 927168247 or email info@casteloconstruction.com
