I'm back

[red]

DWB is not rare in this village by any means!. - but.. if you want to be protector of this endangered (first I heard of it, googled and found no mention) - then you can have mine in your home!
no we have not killed it - the chemical treatment that was so popular a while back is now thought not to be so effective - seems a number of not so good people were telling home owners they had DWB when they just had old holes from long dead beetles, sold them the chemical stuff and lo and behold.. no more beetle (cos there were none in first place). Where the beetle was alive, it was likely to recede further into the wood, and then emerge later. I'm reluctant to use pesticides anyway - and particularly in my home.
The problem is damp - DWB needs the environment to be damp. Here on Dartmoor it rains alot (normally) and old houses have damp.

Perhaps you are thinking that the DWB is rare *in houses* these days - which is - as modern houses are made of pine not oak, and have damp proof courses.

yep so called death watch cos of the tapping sounds the little blighters make when calling for a mate..

[ina]

30mins walk from the nearest cornershop.

You live in a pretty densely populated area of rural Scotland then!

[Millymollymandy]

We've had that familiar sound of the DW beetle too - I think it is pretty difficult to eradicate every wood munching insect from old houses. Ours has stood for nearly 300 years so I'm not too worried. I would be if I'd got termites though!

[paddy]

DWB is not rare in this village by any means!. - but.. if you want to be protector of this endangered (first I heard of it, googled and found no mention) - then you can have mine in your home!
no we have not killed it - the chemical treatment that was so popular a while back is now thought not to be so effective - seems a number of not so good people were telling home owners they had DWB when they just had old holes from long dead beetles, sold them the chemical stuff and lo and behold.. no more beetle (cos there were none in first place). Where the beetle was alive, it was likely to recede further into the wood, and then emerge later. I'm reluctant to use pesticides anyway - and particularly in my home.
The problem is damp - DWB needs the environment to be damp. Here on Dartmoor it rains alot (normally) and old houses have damp.

Perhaps you are thinking that the DWB is rare *in houses* these days - which is - as modern houses are made of pine not oak, and have damp proof courses.

yep so called death watch cos of the tapping sounds the little blighters make when calling for a mate..

I never heard that he only ate Oak but you may have something there, but in this programme they said that because of wood treatments that he has become a rare insect.

The name Death Watch Beetle comes from in the old days where we had our dying and dead relatives at home in our houses and a family member would sit with them as they lay dead and dying and then at night the Beetle woud start banging inside his tunnel for a mate and this is the only sound you would hear in the house ( no radio, Tv or Phone or traffic ).......so he was the ....."Death Watch" ....Beetle.

I suppose he was in all houses in those days.

[Annpan]

No deathwatch beetle here... lots of damp though. The previous owner stood in the livingroom, almost in tears, that we had mentioned damp. As if it was some kind of personal attack. Anyway it is definaetly on the top of the to do list. As with what you are saying with the chemical sprays for deathwatch beetle alot of companies will tell you that your house needs treatment even when it doesn't... last time we had surveys done I dug out my brothers old 'Jewson' (a building supplies merchant) fleece... that seemed to cut down on the bull quite a bit

You shoud thank the heavens that deathwatch is not protected, it is crazy the things that you are not permitted to do sometimes to make a house habitable, even if it is reasonable. Then I suppose its to stop all the crazys who smoke out bats and the like.

[Annpan]

30mins walk from the nearest cornershop.

You live in a pretty densely populated area of rural Scotland then!

Yes I do the motorway is only 5 mins away

Its still a huuugggee change from living right opposite a McDs on the ground floor on a main road 30 mins walk from the 2nd biggest financial town in Britain.

[red]

I never heard that he only ate Oak but you may have something there, but in this programme they said that because of wood treatments that he has become a rare insect.

apparantly DWB will eat pine but only if pushed and usually cos its next to oak - the beetle naturally lives in decidous trees and are accidentlally introduced to the house when it was built. if the conditions are favourable - ie damp! - then the life cycle continues. if the moisture content is removed, with decent heating, etc then it dies out.
Our house has stood for a few hundred years, and the beams are big, but we have already had to replace one floor/ceiling as it bounced when the cat walked across the room - I expected to be downstairs the fast way! - When we lifted the floor boards we found that the oak beams were merely piles of dust in many places. I actually vacuumed some beams up!

Ann - I'm glad you have no beetle - and you are right about dodgy damp selling - we are just living with ours at the mo - altough we have already solved one aread - by filling in a hole in the ground by next door's downpipe!

[Stonehead]

Re electrics - it si surprising how many things you are allowed to do yourself without getting a sparky in with his/her part P - you cn add spurs fix sockets - basically you can do maintenance - but rewiring.. yes you really need the certificate.

Not that you can rely on certificates anyway. The upstairs section of our house was rewired "professionally" a month or two before we bought it. The lights flicker or go out while some of the sockets don't work, so it all has to be redone. And the work was done by alleged electricians.

Same with the insulation. Stick your head through the hatches and it looks fine, but squeeze yourself in between the rafters and the ceiling and you soon discover it's only insulated around the hatches. That was done "professionally", too.

Needless to say, the council signed off on the job, we have lots of worthless certificates and the full building survey didn't find either problem. On top of that, the survery contract is full of small print that basically says "it's not the surveyor's fault if he doesn't find something".

[Annpan]

Same with the insulation. Stick your head through the hatches and it looks fine, but squeeze yourself in between the rafters and the ceiling and you soon discover it's only insulated around the hatches. That was done "professionally", too.

Needless to say, the council signed off on the job, we have lots of worthless certificates and the full building survey didn't find either problem. On top of that, the survery contract is full of small print that basically says "it's not the surveyor's fault if he doesn't find something".

All these mad rules. It makes life much more difficult for us folks who try to do it themselves... and properly, Naturally the cowboys will still get away with what they have always done, and even more so since Joe Bloggs hasn't got a clue.

You really need to have a good rake around yourself... surveys aren't worth the paper they are printed on (except to mortgage companies).