Wood Rot
 

Wet Rots
These grow on timber with a 40-50% moisture content and do not spread too much beyond the source of dampness.
White Rots
Asterostroma
This white rot is usually found in softwood joinery such as skirting boards. Wood is usually bleached, and looks extremely fibrous
The fruit body is thin, sheet-like without pores like mycelium small brown strands adjacent to fruit body
Mycelium is white, cream or buff sheets with strands which can cross long distances over masonry. It is not always present.
Damage - Wood is bleached and becomes stringy and fibrous. No cuboidal cracking and does not crumble.
               Surface of wood may take on a weathered appearance.

Phellinus contiguus

A white rot which attacks hardwoods and softwoods & particularly common to external joinery.
Wood begins to bleach and develops a stringy fibrous appearance. There is no cuboidal cracking and wood does not crumble.
Mycelium is a twany brown colour, and can only be found near fruiting body or in small cracks in wood
Occasionally the fruiting body is found, which is tough, elongated, ochre, dark brown colour, and covered in numerous spores.

Fibroporia vaillantii (mine fungus)


A brown rot which attacks softwood especially in higher temperature areas.
Damage can be extensive, and there are similar infected wood characteristics to dry rot.
Timber cracks in cubiodal sections, but it is a lighter colour and cracks not as deep as dry rot.
Mycelium is white or cream, with fern like growth, and will discolour to brown if in contact with iron. It has very fine creamy white strands which remain flexible even when dry, whereas dry rot strands become brittle when dry.
The fruiting body is a lumpy plate of a white, cream or pale yellow colour with a spore bearing surface

Donkioporia expansa
White rot which attacks hardwood, particularly oak, and may spread to adjacent softwoods.
Often found at beam ends bedded in damp walls and associated with death watch beetle.


Dry Rot
Serpula lacrimans
It has a distinctive musty smell & a tough, fleshy, pancaked fungus and needs wood with only a 20% moisture content.
Mostly grows in the "unseen areas" of your building, such as sub-floor & thrives moist and poorly ventilated indoor conditions.
The spores send out fungal strands along the timber and through or along any wall. When young, it has a yellow ochre centre, which darkens to rusty-red as it matures.
The fungus can attach to carpets.
It eventually becomes a mushroom-like fungus, spores settle as a fine later of red/brown dust on a horizontal surface.
Timber will show a dark/dull brown colour & has deep cuboidal cracks across the grain.
Timber will be light in weight, and will crumble between the fingers if heavily decayed. Branching strands are white/grey, and brittle when dry.

Floors
Joists built into masonry

Roofs

(Coniophora puteana) Cellar Fungus
Brown rot in hardwoods and softwoods, most commonly found in wood which has been saturated by leakage
Cracking of the timber, darkens wood with small cuboidal cracks often below sound veneer.
Mycelium usually present in high humidity. Freshly infected wood is usually discoloured yellowish.
Spreads over the surface of damp brick work and masonry & strands are thin, usually brown or black.
On rare occasions when a fruiting body is found, it is thin, lying flat on a substrate, with small irregular lumps, generally paler when fresh, olive green - brown, with a cream edging.