Hello,
We have a brick-clad wooden house, built in the 70s. The basement consists of some form of hollow bricks and is finished with full height.
This weekend it was time to replace the outer door that had been there since the 70s. It turned out that at some point water had gotten in under the door and damaged the entire wooden beam that goes down to the basement (syll?). Between the facade and the syll, there was a slit where we could inspect the beam. It had started to fall apart in places, and when vacuuming, pieces fell off. However, it didn't feel damp, and there was no odor, so our guess is that this happened many years ago, likely before we moved in. It is worth noting here that we have a water-based underfloor heating just inside the outer door. This was built about 10 years ago and is connected to another room, but we haven't noticed any loss of water from the system.
The right approach here would have been to remove and insert a new beam, or cast, but there was no time for this, and it felt solid enough where the door would stand. Instead, we cleaned out and applied 2 tubes of window installation foam, which filled the entire hole and then some.
Can we settle for this, or are there any overriding risks here that make us need to reconsider?
