If you have a dry rot infestation, what action should you take until the specialist contractors come and remove it all? Should the area be isolated. what are the real health risks. what if it was in a school :) Thanks for any advices, Google is full of misinformation and scare stories, I need some Friday facts. Thanks all.

ClaireL reply - #honoured :) I agree... Contractor removing with 'fun' chemicals and a big hammer next week. The area will be isolated and work controlled. In the mean time access through the area is possible. Staff member has apparently raised concern and reassurance was required, trouble is I have no idea :) You are the third person to say much the same thing, so I think my advice is to avoid the area when possible, not to hit it with a hammer / poke it or eat it. But not to panic too much. Thanks for helping, and happy Friday!

Rentokil did the rot works in my flat. Timbers may need to be cut back some considerable distance and spliced with new wood. Probably lots of plasterwork to come off to enable adequate chemicals injection. Possible temporary structural instability issues to contend with. The previous owner of the flat was about to get the kitchen room window lintels replaced with steel. No proposed temporary works. In practice the lintels were so over engineered in the 1870s that there was still plenty of good wood left. Rotten cut away and rest injected. Saved a fortune.....£22k about to be spent down to £6k. As regards health risks, lots of information and disinformation at http://toxlaw.com/chatboards/blackmold/ Mold (Americans can't spell!) is big litigation topic on the other side of the Pond

I only got 7 out of 10. Off now to tender my resignation and live out the rest of my days under a stone. Can I play the Irish card?

:)

Saw QI a while back and it was stated on there that a growing number of people involved in the field are coming to the conclusion that dry rot doesn't really exist. That it is a sort of industry diagnosis from previous times when identification of the exact cause of that case specific problem was not scientifically possible. Can dry rot be split into different specific 'diagnoses'? If so, would it not be possible to identify specific strategies to deal with each eventuality? Sorry if this is a silly question. Just sounds like someone having a nervous disposition being described as having a case of the screaming habdabs or the heebiejeebies.