Thread: Borers?

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?

Tiger, have a look at this thread......A little case of rot

Can you post a pic?

That will help identify what it is.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.