Humidity and Wood Damage

We often talk about wood damage or wood rot as one of the risks of water in your basement or crawl space, but you might not know quite what we mean. Here’s what happens to wood and what that means for your home.

First, we have to talk about mold. Mold is everywhere. You can’t see most of it, and much of it is pretty harmless, especially when it’s just individual spores. But when mold meets an environment that contains water and organic material, it sets up shop and begins to colonize.

Your basement and crawl space are usually full of organic material - paper backing on insulation, cardboard boxes, and most of all, the wooden beams that support your home. So when you have water problems, be it standing water or ambient moisture (humidity), conditions for mold are ideal.

Once mold takes up in the wooden support beams under your home, you’re on a slippery slope. Even the smallest area of visible mold on a beam is actually millions of spores, so by the time you see it it’s well established. Water and mold will often take over a wooden beam in tandem, as mold follows the water that soaks in, so it doesn’t take long for a beam to become riddled with it.

Now, the mold uses the beams as a food source - it literally consumes them in order to grow and spread - which, just like it sounds, means that parts of the beam will basically disappear. As mold eats the beams, they become weak and start to disintegrate. You’ll see beams splinter and crumble and sometimes break apart completely.

As you can imagine, this isn’t great for your home. Once the beams start to break down, they become unable to support the weight of the home above them. This will cause them to fail exponentially faster, as the weight becomes too much to bear in their progressively weakened state. Upstairs, this will present as soft spots in the floor or sudden dips or slopes. Downstairs, you’ll see broken, splintered, mold-riddled beams.

Since you can’t get rid of the basic framework of your home, the solution is to remove the water. Anything from a dehumidifier to a full waterproofing system may be necessary to keep the space dry enough to inhibit mold growth. We also use products that encapsulate mold and render it dormant to prevent further spread. Finally, in the repair process we will sister beams - wood or metal - to the failing beams to restore strength and support capacity.

Wood damage isn’t just unsightly - over time it can be dangerous to the structural integrity of the foundation.