The building in our back garden that used to be a double garage was converted by the previous owners into a workshop (which is what we call it now). They swapped the big door for a wall, and put planks across the top of the inspection pit dug into the floor, and other things too. When we moved in, my father-in-law said that the house’s loft wasn’t strong enough to store things in, so we piled all the boxes into the workshop. Since then we’ve not unpacked many but added a chest freezer. It’s scary how much stuff is still out there given how full the house is without it… (We unpacked the essentials, and have largely managed without whatever is hiding in the slightly randomly labelled boxes in the workshop.)
A couple of weeks ago I wanted to get to something in the workshop and moved a box out of the way. It had been standing on the wood over the inspection pit, and I noticed there was a white patch on the wood. The inside of the box was icky, and I threw out most of the things in it. Then I noticed other white patches, and something like foam or cotton wool between some of the joists. I resisted the temptation to investigate as I knew I couldn’t make things better and might accidentally spread things and make it worse.
I got a damp and rot specialist in, and he lifted up the planks. The walls of the inspection pit were lined with dry rot – he said it was the worst he’d seen in 20 years. I’m trying to get someone else in to give a second opinion, but whatever it is looks bad. Assuming he’s right, in case it has spread under the floor around the pit at least a metre of floor in each direction around the pit has to be ripped up i.e. a metre of good floor once they’ve stopped finding rot – could be the whole floor. Then lots of spraying with nasty chemicals, and filling in the pit – as this is so deep it would have to be done in stages and compacted down between each one. If you are thinking that this sounds expensive and time-consuming, you’re right.
You may also be thinking that the workshop is rather full for all this ripping up and spraying, and if so you’d be right again. So I’ve been trying to unpack 4 boxes per night and avoid just dumping the contents into the house. For instance, all the various finds of pens and pencils etc. from random boxes have been put where Katy had already got some art and craft things, so I can now predict we will not need to buy another pen or pencil in the next year or two. I’ve also found money, the missing stuffer bit of the grater attachment to the mixer, and many, many other things. Fortunately lots can go in the bin or recycling, but the bins are so full now that I’ll need to go to the tip soon.
We had a look at the survey from when we bought the house, as we had the full one done. It’s long, with a big glossary i.e. quite a few ignored pages. It has a summary that highlights the work to get done, like the roof needs replacing (in a few years, according to my father-in-law), damp is starting to cause subsidence (which we’ve had fixed by having some soak-aways put in), and so on. There are about 13 things, which includes redecorating – but doesn’t include rot in the workshop. Rather buried in another section is a mention of something growing in the workshop, but this apparently wasn’t as serious as redecorating. Hmmm… It’s our responsibility, but moving house is stressful at the best of times so the layout of the survey was far from ideal.
The only silver lining I can see to the cloud is that it is forcing us to get unpacked, which I can see wouldn’t have happened otherwise. While Katy and the children were away I managed to make a reasonable sized dent in the box mountain, but there’s still a long way to go. The builder can’t even do the investigation (ripping up) work for about a month so I should get it done in time.
What sort of survey did you have done? There are several types and if all you had was a mortgage valuation you may well have little or no comeback against the surveyor, otherwise if you had a full structural survey then it should have picked up the presence of a dry rot infestation that severe.
One of the common caveats in surveys is that the inspection is visual, they do not lift carpets and look under them, for example. However, roof spaces should be visually inspected, so should cellars and, unless access was very difficult, then I would have thought that a look into an inspection pit might be expected.
Take lots of photos, take them now and keep on taking them. Seek legal advice.
If what you have really is serpula lacrymans it is very beautiful and quite rare, do you have the fruiting bodies? You also should familiarise yourself with identifying the mycelium, in case it has started to wander.
Oh and bad luck. It is a really nasty thing to have happen.
Oh yes, it is most definitely serpula lacrymans (just like this http://www.marstontimber.co.uk/true_dry_rot_infestation.html – can’t do nice link in comments) and we have some exceedingly good specimens of fruiting bodies, although most now looking a bit squashed as we’ve laid things over them to allow walking across the floor without spreading it further. Around the edges of the pit it really does look like fluffy (cavity-wall type) insulation but the mushroom shaped bodies are (were) rather lovely in their own way. I suspect the damp-proofing was never properly done in the pit; it would not be the only thing not properly done in this house 🙁
Oh what a total nightmare. Poor you all; i’d also echo Tim about the survey. I wasn’t an estate agent for long but anything with that even lurking in the distant future usually cause all hell to break loose. You really ought to have some come back.
Regarding boxes; we once moved and stored a lot of crud in a wet garage for 8 months. By the time we moved again lots of it had black mould; we skipped the lot without looking and i never missed a thing! As a decluttering exercise, i recommend it!
Blimey oh riley. Bummer is an understatement.
Sorry to hear this – it sounds awful. I can second comments about useless surveys, though. We went for a middle-of-the-range one which didn’t spot a hole in the bathroom floor (whose stupid idea was it to make bathroom floors out of chipboard anyway?) and was mostly full of things like “there’s a tree: sometimes trees near houses can cause problems”. Nothing useful like telling us whether anything in this particular house would cause a problem: the surveyor might as well have written “here are all the things which sometimes go wrong with houses – now don’t sue me if any of this happens to you”. It certainly read like all he was interested in was covering his back.
Really sorry to read this. Hope it’s well contained and the clothes you wear in there don’t get worn in the house. Hugs.
Reinforces my view that I don’t ever want to move. Better the house you know . . .