Urgent help please! Rotten joist

A few months back our shower leaked, well it may have been leaking for years.

Insurance co. Instructed 3rd party to repair all works necessary. Basically they cocked up installing the new shower screens and tray, which meant they are out now sorting it out again.

As they have taken the shower tray up I saw that rotten hardboard had not been replaced. More worryingly, I prodded the joist in the picture is completely rotten!

The guy agrees it needs to come out, but he reckons only the section shown in the picture, which is about 60cm + the bit in the wall. I have no idea if this is safe, or right. Does all the floor need exposing and the compete joist taking out?

No need to replace it all:

Cut out rot – including section in wall.
Scarf joint old to new section (or other suitable joint).
Bolt in another new section next to old covering joint and as long as possible – ideally this will go into wall next to repaired old joist.

IANAB 😯

Hth
Marko

I had a similar looking one in my first ever house, old owners had a shower they “never used”, I ripped it out and found lots of dry rot.

Builders cut back the wood in the joist to good stuff and slotted in a new section alongside, don’t know the exact joints or methods used, we had a scaffolding pole in the kitchen for a couple of days supporting the cut joist.

Joist was the easy bit, finding the extent of the dry rot, removing the plaster, cleaning treating and replastering was the long job.

Best get it sorted, dry rot is a nightmare.

Is the joist conmpletely rotten or just the top surface? We had a similar scenario when we bought then refurbed our house. It stank. Once everything had dried out I could see that it was only the top half inch or so that was rotting while the floorboards all around had turned to something like wet Weetabix. I replaced those and painted the joist with lots of Cuprinol. I’m not concerned about it at all, there was no fungus.

You can poke a screwdriver through the joist in the middle 🙁

Thanks for the advice, they have agreed to take out Tommorow explore area and replace joist section and bracket it etc. Bunch of Cowboys !

Take away the hitching post outside the front door and stop serving beans, the cowboys will move on.

I had a whole room with joists eaten by woodworm

Wood worm damaged joists by Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

I braced them all with new timber, just to get the floor level…

More joist repairs by Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr