Mystery Solved!

A rotted floor and a strange circle in the ground...

If you saw my recent Twitter post, you saw that I recently got pretty embroiled in a project where one thing led to another, and I soon found myself at the bottom of a hole…literally. It was all for a good cause - rooting out a water issue - but what was the big deal, anyway? Well, let’s discuss.

First, let’s set the stage. The issues present at this property, a very old stone house [meaning, loadbearing monolithic stone walls with wood framed floors], were the following:

• a wet stone/wet plaster smell present in the rooms nearest this corner on days with a lot of rain

• darker mortar joints on the exterior walls nearest this corner on days with a lot of rain

• after prolonged dry spell, a large circle of dead grass nearest this corner

• oral history that an old cistern had been located nearby

• rotted joists where they made contact with this part of the wall [suggesting prolonged contact with wet masonry]