5 Tricks For Recognizing And Treating Wood Rot in West Chester, PA

When you have a wooden surface or structure, one thing that you’re going to have to be very careful with is how water is going to interact with that surface.

There are good things that water can do to the wood of course, but it can also make for a lot of damage — and that includes the sort of rot that extensively damages your structure and furniture, the type from which you fundamentally cannot ever really recover but only hope to repair and replace and hope for the best.

If. you are able to recognize it, that is a good thing — you’ll be able to take action to make sure you treat it and see what you can do to stop it from coming within the future.

Let’s look at five tricks for recognizing and treating wood rot in West Chester, PA.

1. Mold And Mildew Are Not Rot

One thing that you should know when it comes to recognizing and treating the wood rot you may have is to understand the fundamental difference between wood rot and mold and mildew.

Though they all pretty much come from the same sort of place, which is the application of water to wood and then it not being properly removed, these things are unique.

Mold and mildew are of course quite dangerous to your home and an entire article can be written on the subject of what to do about it but here we focus primarily on wood rot, which is not the same.

2. Treating Sooner Is Always Better

In terms of taking care of your wood rot, the sooner you’re going to be able to take care of it and make sure that you have fully removed the wood rot that is affecting your wood at home, the better.

To treat rot is to take measures that will ensure that it does not come back and in pretty much every case it means that you have to fully remove the rotted areas — and the longer you go without treating it, the larger the areas become until you’re basically replacing entirely whatever it is that got affected by the rot.

3. How To Recognize Soft Rot

Soft rot is one of the more interesting kinds of wood rot that you will ever see and it is recognizable in pretty much one way — that the rot causes a cavity to be formed in the wood with which you are working.

It’s entirely possible that in addition to the cavities, you will also see some cracking on the surface of the wood — and the combination of the two elements means for sure that you are dealing with soft rot.

4. How To Recognize White Rot

White rot is a rather unpleasant condition to have to contend with and it is quite easily recognizable in that you will see white, gray, and even yellow spots on the surface of the wood that is affected.

The other way that you’re going to be able to know that your wood has white rot is that the wood has a generally spongy feeling around the areas where there is rot — if you get that sensation, you know you have a problem on your hands.

5. How To Recognize Brown Rot

Lastly, brown rot — a rather unpleasant sort of wood rot that is primarily recognizable because it gets the wood to be so very dry that it becomes extremely fragile and almost dust like in its appearance.

The affected wood will lose the majority of its strength and you’ll know by how easily it breaks apart that you may well have brown rot.

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