What Kinds of Fungi Causes Floor Sagging?

There are different kinds of fungi that can grow on your wood and cause floor sagging. Identifying how exactly your wood is rotting will help you determine when to take action and repair the crawl space and understand what can be done to prevent further damage before things get severe. Depending on the fungi, the wood can rot in two different ways: dry rot and soft rot. 

Wood rot can still be salvageable depending on how it’s rotting. Of course, getting rid of the fungus is a lot harder than you’d think, but it’s still worth at least knowing how your wood is being affected. Take a flashlight and a screwdriver with you down to your crawl space to do a quick inspection and you’ll be able to tell what kind of rot you’re dealing with. 

• Dry Rot  

Dry rot is any kind of fungus that eats away at wood without softening it. The most common type of fungus that does this to wood is known as brown rot. Brown rot was originally just called dry rot because it was believed that it didn’t need moisture to survive, but this isn’t true. People soon discovered that brown rot is capable of pulling moisture from afar, which is how it can survive even when the humidity levels are relatively low. 

Brown rot specifically can be identified because it leaves a pattern on the wood that looks like small squares. It is often confused for termites, so another way to determine if the damage was caused by brown rot is to check for red spores. 

• Soft Rot  

Soft rot affects wood differently from dry rot. This kind of fungus makes the wood feel soft and spongy. It often discolors the wood and turns it either green or white, though white is the most common. These kinds of fungi tend to shrink the wood as well. 

While wood suffering from dry rot can be saved, the ones that go soft from rot are unsavable. Once the wood becomes soft, it is too deformed to function as a support beam. Even if it’s cured of rot, the wood is too shrunken down and is unable to support the same amount of weight it was once able to. When dealing with soft rot in wood, you might have to replace it depending on the extent of the damage.