In reply to your questions:
The manufacturer supplied bricks some of which I condemned. as not up to sample. He then supplied a better quality for which he charged the builder a higher, unauthorized, price. In order to secure a refund I had to make good my contention that he was not entitled to a higher rate than that first quoted.
(2) None.
(3) Directly I receive it.
Yours sincerely,
Spinlove’s hackles were erect when he wrote this.
DRY ROT APPEARS
MISS PHYLLIS BRASH TO SPINLOVE
Dear Jazz,14.8.26.
Mum is away so what about a beano on Saturday sans all parental tennis crocks; just Snooty, Biff, Woggles, Boojum, you and me—a whole afternoon of fast and furious? Boojum wants Snooty for keeps, but don’t let on as it’s most frightfuIly serious. Boo served hatfulls of doubles last Thursday and poor Snooty dunno where she are. Buzz in early and bring tuxedos and pys as the caboodle flits to Bingham’s at nine. Only the usual old rampage but Porky B with two snotties out of his old bum-boat are there on a week-end binge and we shant go home till the Hullaballoo-bala-balay. I’m perfectly potty but YOU know what I mean.
Now don’t scream, but:
There’s suthin’ funny amiss, Miss;
Along by the pantery sink.
Thus our Judith cussically obsairve (see Art. Ward) jerking poetry in your honour. Seriously, the suthin’ funny is decidedly dud. Dad is having the paintwork scrubbed to keep it from flaking off, and to-day the fairy hand, of Judith burst the wood thingy that runs along under the sink. It is evident suthin’ is amiss, for the wood is bulged, and cracked and woolly, and seems to be crumbling and it is very much rather all along under the windows in the kitchen. No one dare tell Dad except Mum, and it is a shrieking necess to have suthin’ done before they come back in three weeks’ time. Dad joins her on rest cure next week.
Meet the posh cubby hole and patent pocket nest Mum has made of the boxroom! You really never! It’s too dilly! Twice as good as a caravan! Copied from the “converted attic” at the I” Homes Exy but ever so much nicer as the window is simply microscopic and it is all dim and penurious, and the roof slopes so that you can only stand up near the middle but, of course, when its a case of sits there is tons of room. The windey stairs we absolutely thrilling and there is the most dinky furniture you ever, and Mum and I simply cuddle ourselves there. Mum bought an old dud grate she saw lying in a cottage garden for one and ninepence, which was a bargain as the man asked two at first; and Grig’s people made a fireplace with it. Mum is trying to find some old oak beams so that it will all be posher: and old panelling for the sloping part where the white ff. We will have tea up there on Saturday.
Yours,
PUD.
Mum is going to be psychoed.
This letter has probably been preserved to us because of its on of dry rot; for that fell disease, which is a more fierce enemy of new houses than of old ones, is here clearly indicated.
We now learn why Lady Brash asked Grigblay to arrange a fireplace in the boxroom.
SPINLOVE TO GRIGBLAY
17.8.26.
Dear Sir,
I was at Honeywood during the week-end and it was pointed out to me that the skirting under the pantry sink is crumbling away like touch-wood. I imagined that water from the sink had rotted it but there is no sign of wet, and the skirting along the outer wall of the kitchen is going in the same way. It is clear that the wood was not properly seasoned and it will be necessary to renew these skirtings at once.
Yours faithfully,
It seems that Spinlove has never seen, or smelt, dry rot, but one would think that he might have guessed what the extraordinary condition was due to. To attempt to cure the trouble by fixing new skirtings would be like trying to extinguish afire by throwing fuel on it. The only remedy is to remove the whole of the rotted wood, to thoroughly sterilize surroundings, and to discover and end the cause of the outbreak.
GRIGBLAY TO SPINLOVE
Dear Sir, 20.8.26.
We gathered from your letter that dry rot is the trouble, and yesterday sent over our shop foreman, Hassoks, who says no great harm done but it has got into the back of the china cupboard. He pulled the vertical scotia off and there it was five feet up, but does not seem to have taken any hold. He says it has started on the edge of wood-block flooring but not gone far he thinks. The kitchen is not so bad, but there is a soft place in the skirting at foot of stairs and it sounds dead all along, Hassoks says. so it has got a hold there too. We do not know cause as Hassoks reports walls seem dry as a bone. Perhaps you would like to meet Mr. Grigblay at the house and decide what best to be done, and if you will appoint a day we will send over to take out the cupboard and open up for your inspection.
Yours faithfully,
This is a bad business, but how bad, remains to be seen.
Dry rot is a disease of timber caused by various species of fungi which feed on wood, penetrate it, and destroy it. Infection is by contact with diseased wood, or by spores latent in it, borne on the air or conveyed by dirt. If conditions favour its growth, dry rot may be regarded as Inevitable; if they are unfavourable there is no danger. Favourable conditions are the coincidence of damp with warmth and lack of ventilation; and it is particularly the responsibility of architects and builders, as the law decrees, to so design and build that those conditions shall not anywhere arise. As warmth is always present in a building, and it is impossible to ventilate every cranny of it, damp is regarded as the prime cause of dry rot. The need for entire prevention of damp is, therefore, always in the mind of the architect, the builder, the clerk of works and the foreman in charge. Ventilation, by carrying away evaporation, is a safeguard against “damp,”
The beauty of dry rot-in the opinion of its admirers—is that when it once gets going it sends out, with devastating rapidity, thread-like tendrils which carry moisture, yards from the source, over the surface of walls and even though them, and which multiply to form mats of dense, cobwebby filament that collect moisture from the air and so set up and maintain new centres of growth from which new foraging tendrils spread. Thus the good work continues, so that one solitary brick carelessly thrown into the broken rubbish under the concrete foundation of a wood-block floor, and disposed in such a way as to conduct damp from the ground to the concrete, may set up in the wood blocks dry rot which in a few weeks will have travelled to the space behind skirtings, invaded the back of the door linings, passed into the staircase and involved the first floor before its presence is anywhere noticed.
The circumstances that give rise to dry rot are innumerable, and are a continued source of interest and pleasure to irresponsible observers; but the conditions of damp combined with warmth and lack of ventilation are always present. A few days after a radiator is installed below a sliding sash window in an unfinished house, dry rot has started inside one of the jamb casings involved the whole of it; eighteen, months after a roof is finished by pointing the tiles without ventilating the roof-space, sagging outlines lead to the discovery that the whole of the inside surface is a mass of cobwebby fungus, and that the timbers are perished to the point of collapse, and—as made famous in the Courts half a century ago—the floors and joinery of a hospital have to be renewed at a cost of several thousand pounds because the wooden pegs, driven into the ground to fix the screeding-level of concrete floor-foundations, were not taken out. What exactly has happened at Honeywood we do not know; but some source of continuous dampness in contact with the skirting, with other woodwork near to it, is indicated.
SPINLOVE TO MISS PHYLLIS BRASH
21.8.26.
I am coming down on Thursday to meet Grig about the pantry do. Am arranging to get all done before the two P’s return, but there will be carpenters to take out the china cupboard so will you get the crockery cleared?
Apparently Spinlove hay some sensitiveness about typing his superscription and subscription to this lady. It is, of course, inadvisable to d
elay the work, for the harm is growing, and it will occasion less upset—both physical and moral—if all is completed before “the two Ps” return.
Spinlove’s light-hearted assumption that the trouble can be readily cured, while he does not know the cause of it, is lamentable. It is clear that not only has he had no experience of dry rot, but that he has no knowledge of it at second hand, or he would view this manifestation of it with consternation. The rot in the pantry and kitchen may be only first evidences of an outbreak involving the whole of the ground-floor skirtings, which may itself be but the first visible flicker of flames that are raging out of sight in the floors, and which have already secretly invaded the cavities at the back of panelling and of door and window linings and of fireplace surrounds. Even this does not measure the full dimensions of the possible catastrophe, for not only has the damaged work to be restored and all parts near it to be doctored to destroy the infecting spores of the fungus, but the cause of the outbreak must be fully proved and, when proved, then entirely eradicated, and as this cause may be fundamental in the design of the structure or inherent in the materials employed, the little pieces of decayed skirting, as every experienced architect knows, may, as likely as not, signal a great calamity.
SPINLOVE TO WILLIAM WYCHETE, ESQ., P.P.R.I.B.A.
Dear Mr. Wychete, 24.8.26.
You have been so extremely kind in the past in advising me, that I hope you will not mind my troubling you, but I have a case of dry rot which I do not know how to deal with. I enclose prints of 1/8 in. scale plan, and 1/2 in. section of the outer
The house has been occupied now for six months, and the skirting along the outside north wall of the kitchen, pantry hall up to the stairs, is rotted, and the under edge of the Colombian pine wood-block flooring has begun to go in places. The larders, scullery and cloaks along the same front are tiled and have tiled skirtings. I should mention we pulled up some of the wood blocks, but there was no sign of rot except just at outer edges, and no evidence of rot anywhere else; and though the growth had run up behind the china cupboard the wood was sound.
The walls behind the skirting were “bone dry,” the builder said; but he was doubtful of the concrete under the block floor. We cut this away where it lies against the wall, and the builder then said he understood the cause.
If you look at the half-inch detail you will see that the damp-course lies just below the concrete foundation of the floor; but floor was lowered 1 ½ inches after the damp-course was built, of the concrete comes an inch below the damp-work. The brickwork below the damp-course is full of water, and the builder says that damp is drawn into the concrete edge lies against the wet bricks, and that this dry rot. Can this be possible? He also says that creeps up between the bricks and the concrete, and brickwork above the damp-course, but I could not see any evidence of this. Do you think he is right? I could see damp myself. Before we cut away the concrete the thought the trouble might be due to the rain, which through the outer 4 1/2 ins. of the hollow wall, collecting on the damp-course and getting into the inner wall, but he forgot the hollow goes down below the damp-course.
The main question is—If the builder is right, what is to be done? He says he cannot advise me; that he built as I directed accept responsibility. I pointed out that he suggested lowering the floor so that the threshold of front entrance line up with the brick joint and make a neat finish; but the decision was mine and that he followed my lowering the floor.
The north wall of the billiard-room is panelled in oak and the floor is of oak boards nailed to fillets let into concrete. The panelling is ventilated behind by openings in the skirting and in the top of the capping. There is no sign of dry rot here, and the builder says he thinks there is no danger.
I should be so very much obliged if you will tell me what you think I had better do, if it is not troubling you.
Yours sincerely,
The sketch below illustrates the positions of the floor and damp-course described.
The eminent Wychete must be a good friend, indeed, to lay himself open to the fatigue of solving posers of this kind: and Spinlove must have great confidence in his opinion or he would consult a friend closer at hand instead of writing to Manchester, where, as his address indicates, Wychete operates. We know from earlier letters that the site of Honeywood slopes towards the south, and that it is only the floors on the north side that are laid directly on concrete. The others are carried on joists supported on steeper walls.
WYCHETE ADVISES
WYCHETE TO SPINLOVE
My dear Spinlove,26.8.26.
This is an awkward business, and if you cannot deal with it yourself if you ought to get the advice of someone on the spot; but, of course, you alone are responsible to your client, and no one bu yourself can decide what course to take. The question you and the builder is a difficult one. If I were you not press your point of view to the extent of making antagonistic. He may be willing to do what is necessary without any charge, but, quite naturally, he will take no action will involve him in responsibility. This is the reason he refuses to advise you, and he will not, you will find, handle the matter as a “defect” under the terms of the contract. If he did this, he would admit liability for the whole extent of the damage. This may, of course, become extensive.
I do not, however, think that it will extend. In my opinion builder’s view of the cause of the outbreak is likely to be but as the growth appears not to be vigorous, I think that the mount of damp is probably very small, and that the use wood may have led to trouble which otherwise might not have occurred.
To make the house perfectly safe it would be necessary to cut away the concrete floor-foundation against internal as well as external, wherever there are “solid” wood is, over nearly half the area of the house-and good clear of the damp-course; but I think the case will if you replace all affected skirtings and blocks on top of an impervious bituminous coating made continuous with the in which the wood blocks are laid, and covering walls behind skirtings. Bellflower and Snooter Ltd. manufacture coatings for various purposes and would advise what best to use. You should also treat the back parts of the cupboard, and all contaminated work, as well as the back now, with a solution of sulphate of iron. There is nothing better for killing dry rot and it does not smell as creosote does.
If this fails, you will have to cut away the concrete. If it succeeds, you can treat any other similar outbreaks in the same way, but let us hope that there will be none. I have no doubt the ventilation of the panelling, in the billiard-room will prevent any trouble there.
Ever, my dear Spinlove,
Yours sincerely,
Wychete’s tactful reminder that Spinlove is responsible to his client, and that whatever action he takes must be his own decision, is, much to the point. Wychete’s advice—whatever it is worth cannot lead Spinlove astray; for the reparation, if experimental, is simple, and should it be without effect, little time and money will have been wasted. There is, however, the risk that while Spinlove is dealing tentatively with this small outbreak, far-reaching growths, which immediate drastic action would prevent, may be establishing themselves secretly in other parts of the house. The decision whether to take this risk or not and, if not, what measures to adopt, devolves on Spinlove; and no one can relieve him from the need to rely on his own discretion, for that discretion is linked to a responsibility which belongs to no one but himself. It is the exercise of discretion hampered by considerations of cost, of risk, of exact justice, of conflicting interests, of uncertainty as to facts, of misunderstandings and of diverse individualities and dishonest or incapable agents, which is the chief care and preoccupation of architectural practice. To design a building, to draw and specify every part of it, and to direct its construction and see it completed with no other anxieties and dilemmas than belong to the exercise of those duties, is unknown.
SPINLOVE TO WYCHETE
My dear Mr. Wychete, 27.8.26.
Thank you extremely for your most kind letter. I am enormously o
bliged for your advice. I will act on it at once. Surely, as the dry rot is due to the builder’s use of infected wood, the outbreak is his fault and he can be held responsible for making good?
With kind regards,
Ever yours sincerely,
Spinlove’s impetuosity here again prevails to his discredit. He plainly tells Wychete that he has not troubled to read his letter.
WYCHETE TO SPINLOVE
Dear Spinlove,28.8.26.
I give no advice but merely make suggestions. There is no means of knowing that the wood was infected; and the “cause,” of the outbreak is, in any case, damp.
Yours sincerely,
Exactly! Wychete was particular in warning Spinlove that he own judgment: by replying “I am taking your advice at once,” Spinlove announces that he is relying on Wychete’s. Wychete, naturally, will allow no such interpretation of his letter. Wychete was also particular in exculpating the builder; and if Spinlove had reflected, he would not have requited his benefactor by plaguing him to say once again what he has already been at pains to make clear.
SPINLOVE TO GRIGBLAY
Dear Sirs,27.8.26.
I enclose specification of work in making good where dry rot has appeared. If you see any objections to the proposals will you let me know? The work should be completed if possible before the end of next week when Sir Leslie and Lady Brash, who are away, return.
Yours faithfully,
GRIGBLAY TO SPINLOVE
Dear Sir,28.8.26.
Honeywood Settlement Page 12
