IT IE HOUSE AM) ITS EQUIPMENT. A&amp;lt; } 



DRY ROT. 



Warning Signs oj Dry Ko! Its Causes Precautionary Measures- Treatment 



and Cure. 



L&quot;T no one be so presumptuous as to say that &quot; dry rot &quot; has no terrors for him. He may, for twenty 

 years past, have lived in his house in comfort, assuring himself, in the words of his boast, that 

 it was as &quot; dry as a bone,&quot; and that an attack of dry rot was an impossibility. And yet, all 

 the time, the evil day was approaching. Unwittingly, the gardener had, year by year, earthed 

 up the flower-beds next the walls, each year s top-dressing raising them a little higher than 

 the year before, until at last they reached above the damp-course and choked up the air bricks which 

 ventilated the under-floor space. The ends of the floor-joists had become dam]), the air Ix neath the 

 floor stagnant, and the dry rot spore, after so long and so patiently biding its opportunity, had not been 

 slow to sei/.e it, now that it had come. An unpleasant, musty or cellar smell pervades the room. The 

 skirtings, and even the door linings, are observed to be cracked and blistered, and, on removing the side 

 board, a growth as of mildew is found covering both it and the adjacent wall. On removing the floor 

 boards a truly wonderful sight is revealed, for the joists appear to be cased in cotton-wool of snowy 

 whiteness, or in grey and brown leather jackets cold and clammy to the touch. 



Now this dry rot is a fungus (Merulius lacrymans) allied to the mushroom tribe, and it feeds on 

 the substance of coniferous wood, on deal and pitch pine. It requires moisture and a certain amount of 

 warmth, and flourishes best in a dark, warm, stagnant atmosphere. A drying wind is fatal to it ; but. 

 on the other hand, if the conditions are favourable to its growth, it will spread with ama/.ing rapidity. 

 If one would escape its ravages, one must assume the existence of living spores about the house, on the 

 alert, as it were, to commence their devastating course, and act accordingly. These spores may have 

 been brought on a carpenter s saw or on his clothes, or they may have been blown hither by the wind. 

 But they are there, waiting ! A leaky down-pipe may supply the moisture. The modern hot-water 

 apparatus is a prolific cause, for its joints often leak and its pipes provide the necessary warmth to the 

 cellars and under-floor spaces. For it these spaces have not been covered with concrete, and properly, 

 even abundantly, ventilated at the time that the house was built, the risk of dry rot i-~ very considerable. 

 Let anyone, therefore, who contemplates the introduction of a heating apparatus into an old house be 

 wise in time and take precautions against damp and stagnant air. for many old buildings have no damp- 

 course. Even if a damp-course is present and the soil has been concreted and the under-floor space 

 ventilated, it must be remembered that there is still a part of the wall below the damp-course in contact 

 with the damp earth, unless an external air channel, itself ventilated, has been wisely provided. .More 

 over, care should have been taken that the ground floor-joists are not built into the wall, but rest on an 

 oversailing course, covered by the damp-course. Perhaps, however, the most frequent cause is tin- 

 foolish hurry to inhabit a new house. It is not that the shell of the house has been built too rapidly, 

 for it is an advantage to get the roof on and protect the building from the weather ; but the windows are 

 glazed and the floors laid too soon. Skirtings and dadoes are fixed against the damp walls to wood plugs 

 driven into the brick-joints, and all too soon they are painted or varnished, and the damp which they 

 have absorbed is imprisoned. In the same way, kamptulicon or thick carpets, but especially the former, 

 imprison the moisture of the half-dried floors. The tongueing also of ground flooring, otherwise desirable, 

 prevents the passage of air between the open joints which would otherwise help to dry them. And then, 

 the crowning folly ! the house is heated up to dry the walls. By all means have a gentle heat from open 

 fires, and keep all the windows open except at dewfall. Often, however, the windows are kept closed, 

 and the moisture which is drawn from the walls during the day is condensed on them and re-absorbed 

 by the walls at night. There is a yet greater depth of stupidity, and that is to attempt to dry the house by 

 lighting the gas. Water is largely produced in the combustion of gas, as one may ascertain by observing 

 that a cold glass vessel held above the flame becomes dimmed with moisture. This water of combustion 

 is condensed on the cold walls, and may be seen streaming down them if the drying operation has been 

 carried far enough. The Tcrk system of drying new buildings, recently introduced, rests on sound 

 principles, and may be employed with advantage. 



Floor-boarding is sometimes laid direct on concrete, nailed to wood strips embedded in its substance. 

 This is a reprehensible practice. Coke breeze fixing-blocks should be set in the concrete, and, after the 

 latter is set and dry, it should be covered with bitumen preparatory to nailing down the floor-boards. But 



