Timber decay
Rot doesn't stop
where you can see it.
Dry rot is the one that costs the most when it is found late. Wet rot is far more common and far more manageable. Woodworm is usually historic and usually over-treated.
Serpula lacrymans
Dry rot
Rust-red spore dust, cuboidal cracking across the grain, grey-white mycelium and a mushroom smell. It travels through and behind masonry, so the visible damage is rarely the full extent — which is why the survey matters more than the treatment quote. It needs a persistent water source, so there is always a live defect behind it. We establish the extent, treat only where it is justified, and specify the building repair that removes the moisture.
Coniophora and others
Wet rot
Darkened, soft, stringy timber confined to the wet area. Joist ends built into a damp gable, window cills, sub-floor plates, the bottom of a door frame. Contained, predictable, and resolved by stopping the water and replacing or resin-repairing the affected timber.
Anobium punctatum
Woodworm
Common furniture beetle in damp sub-floor softwood. The question is never "are there holes" — it is whether the infestation is active, which we assess by frass, bore hole condition and timber moisture content. Historic infestation in dry timber needs no chemical treatment at all.
Where we find it in Wales
Cellars, solums and built-in joist ends.
Victorian and Edwardian terraces in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea frequently have cellars, and a cellar with a blocked vent and a leaking downpipe above it is close to ideal conditions for dry rot. Valleys terraces built into a hillside have earth or slab solums with minimal cross-ventilation and ground water moving through them.
Across all of it, the recurring find is a joist end bearing directly into a wet solid wall. The timber is doing nothing wrong; the wall is wet because the render outside it has failed. Replace the joist without fixing the render and you have bought roughly a year.
Find the extent
Rot is a moisture problem wearing a fungus costume.
We find the water first, then the timber. Treating one without the other is money on fire.