Hello from Beagle! Hope all is well in your world.

For the next three months Beagle is offering a free educational seminar opportunity. DM me if you are interested.

Normally this would be a couple of hours of content and questions. Mould, decay and other water spoilage issues in general and issues tailored to your particular expertise or recent work focus. This month’s newsletter provides an example of an insurance issue where decay was used to determine the timing of moisture arrival. Mould occurrence can be similarly useful.

Diagram 1. In this analysis we were able to tell the insurer that the damage in the wood had occurred many years before a flood damage claim.

Because we knew the rate of development of the advanced soft rot decay from empiricism and observation of other situations, the analysis was able to establish that damage was unrelated to flooding but had been caused by ongoing weathertightness failure. We used what are called vital morphological stains/dyes that are only absorbed by active decay fungi, so it was also clear that the soft rot was still active due to ongoing leaks, not the flood itself. Similarly, we are able to distinguish pre- and post- earthquake damage. Forensic analysis compares what we already know about how materials behave in different usage situations with a new situation. The type of biodeterioration tells us about the history of what happened to the material. Water in particular, as a liquid or gas (humidity) changes materials and almost always leaves microscopic clues about when it was present and what damage was present.

2025 is Beagle’s 20th anniversary – 100,000’s of specimens under the microscope. Nine thousand buildings (residential, commercial, high rise), boats, bridges, railway sleepers, furniture, shipping, art, horticultural posts, wharfs, mariners, packaging, piles, archaeology, posts, cars, pallets, shipping, storage, food spoilage, wood, plastics, metals, composites, brick, stone, etc:

My clients are building surveyors, council inspectors, lawyers, loss adjusters, the MOE, insurers, patent attorneys, overseas hotel chains, research centres, paper producers, wood preservation companies, sawmills, forestry companies, the police, museums, Jo Blogs, and many more. If I have missed you out, put in the comments below.

I’m really looking forward to keeping in touch and hope you enjoy my newsletter.

Feel free to ask questions and get in touch anytime.

Best Regards

Robin