Borers?

[Tiger]

I'm going to lay some tile underlay down for some tiling and while I took off the old floor covering I found that some of the floorboards had lots of small holes and were soft to touch when I put a screwdriver to them. The boards looked like violet crumble and the timber just came off in flakes. I'm going to replace the boards with chipboard but I noticed that the bottom plate of a wall has got a little bit of this damage and so does a bearer, only about 15 to 20 % in each case. What is this condition called and should I replace both bearer and the bottom plate?

[watson]

Tiger, have a look at this thread......http://www.renovateforum.com/f203/little-case-rot-100803/

[Bedford]

Can you post a pic?

That will help identify what it is.

[Tiger]

Here are some photos. One is a cross section of a floorboard. Photos taken at night so colour is not easily evident but it's like violet crumble yellow.8797787978

[Bloss]

That looks to me like the remnants of termite infestation not rot. You should get a professional inspection done to see if there are any active sites and then work out what needs replacing.

[intertd6]

That looks like rot to me, probably had moisture on / around it for a long period of time whch softens it enough for borers to attack, of which I can see some small holes, once they have a few holes in it then the moisture can get deeper & deeper, then it sets up a nice place for wood eating fungus to destroy the timber hence the colour you descibe, if it were termite damage then normally there would be just a thin shell of outside timber left with some strands of internal timber left they didn't find tasty. Best to remove all the damaged timber if its more than 1/4 in section defective
regards inter

[Bedford]

A couple of daylight pics would help, I sorta agree with the others in that the first pic looks like rot, but the second could be from Termites.

[Bloss]

:whs: but not borers - which attack sapwood only wet or dry and will be well gone with timber that age. Need better pics. as Bedford says.