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Fur on porch joists


Mike Lamb

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I see this fur on floor joists beneath 100+ year old front porches often. I’m sure it’s wood fibers from years of water and oxidation but it’s peculiar. The wood is not rotting. Maybe someone has a scientific explanation?

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I see our personal relationship has progressed to the stage where we feel comfortable commenting on each other's personal appearance. How nice. I've been looking for a way to gently tell you that short sleeves aren't flattering on men with little girl arms for at least the past ten years, but until today, I've been letting good manners hold me back.

;)

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We kid. We kid because we love. Jeez, guys, we've got to toss a few bombs at each other every so often just to keep things light, don't we?

Admittedly, the loincloth was a guess, but an educated guess. Kurt IS the undisputed Dean of the University of Sexual Perversity, after all.

Your brother from another mother,

Jimmy

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I crawled under a porch of a 100+yr old farmhouse where two women and about five big dogs lived. The porch flooring was gapped for ventilation I guess, but the perimeter was latticed tight. Anyway the dog hair had been gently falling for several years and did not accrete onto the sides of the framing, but due to my belly crawl did waft up to fill the air and gag me.

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It's not any type of animal hair and yes, it is quite common under very old porches.

It's called wood defibration and it's from the breakdown of the lignin between the fibers on the surface of the wood. It's usually from very slow, gradual decay. It can also be caused by salty air or salt used for melting ice.

It's also been called defibrosis, delignification and "hairy timber" rot.

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