The district of Kew in the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames may be best known as the home of Kew Gardens with its incredibly rare plants, however Kew, can also be home to some other nasty things growing such as dry rot fungus, the problem is, this is a species that we would rather not nurture. If you live in or around the TW postcode and suspect something growing in your property call London, Surrey and the Home Counties number one dry rot and damp specialist company since 1971, Tapco Homedry.

Our most recent client in Kew lived in a three bedroom ground floor flat in a converted semi-detached building that was built around the 1920’s. The owner was extremely concerned about the flooring which had become ‘springy’ and had noticed a strong mushroom, rotting smell. Unfortunately this is often the first sign of dry rot. She also noticed that she was constantly wiping a reddish brown dust from her furniture but what she didn’t know was, these were dry rot spores.

Our qualified Tapco Surveyor took moisture readings from walls and timbers using an electronic ‘Survey Master’ to detect evidence of damp walls. He also thoroughly examined all accessible flooring timbers and joinery timbers to assess ant softening of the wood.

Dry Rot Fungus is sensitive to a moisture content below 20% and to temperatures over 25C so it is therefore essential that the cause of the moisture ingress is found and rectified, and rapid drying of the structure is promoted immediately.

There was an extensive virulent attack of the True Dry Rot Fungus to the flooring timbers of the ground floor front and rear room. We also found several areas with damp plaster, caused by rising damp, which had caused the timbers to be wet and susceptible to dry rot attack.

Tapco Homedry were immediately asked to schedule the remedial work to rid the property of dry rot. Our Operatives are fully trained and very experienced to deal with this and immediately started the following works:

• Removing all contaminated wall plaster and affected timber
• Cleaning masonry and remaining timbers and applying high performance preservatives
• Replacing joinery timbers with new pre-treated timber
• Re-plastering the walls in accordance with our dry rot plastering system

Our work was covered by a long term 20 year guarantee, via Guarantee Protection Insurance (GPI) and our membership of several professional bodies including the British Damage Management Association (BDMA) and the Property Care Association (PCA) gave our client total confidence in us.

Don’t take a gamble with your home, call Tapco HomeDry on 0800 195 9878 for a full dry rot and damp survey as prevention is far less expensive than cure.