Not quite what Jacques said but given the opportunity to wield some power tools and large hammers with few or no consequences, who wouldn't want to pop down to Wiltshire for some fun? The task was simple: dismantle the floor.
To achieve this (and as we weren't precious about saving the wood anymore), we bought an Evolution Rage circular saw. These are pretty cheap and come with a blade which it is claimed will cut wood, aluminium and 6mm of steel. Perfect for slicing up floorboards with imbedded steel strips! Coupled with a lump hammer, claw hammer and crowbar we were pretty confident resistance would be futile.
Soon we established a rhythm and pattern of attack. Slice through the length of the floor between two joists (you can tell where they are because of the lines of nails) then smash the resultant stubs of wood until they spring clear. Slice smash. Slice smash. The picture in your mind should be of a post-tossed Gimli and Aragorn cutting swathes through the advancing hordes, clearing the bridge down from Helm's Deep. After each row you get a treat: you can take up the old joist and cut it into thirds to fit in the skip.
It was an interesting exercise, discovering where the wood was most rotten, progressively working our way from one end to the other. It emerged that the earth sub-floor in the hall does not slope either, as one might expect due to the nature of what's outside. It's a fairly constant height, maybe a foot or so from the board level. Crossing it are small sleeper walls, onto which are sleepers. These support the joists at about 2m intervals in order to allow for smaller, cheaper joists to be used to span the gaps. The joists are single lengths around 4.5m long and about 50mm x 100mm. To span a gap this size would normally require joists twice as deep.
What had been happening with the sleepers and joists, as with pretty much everywhere else, was the wood had been placed directly in contact with soil. The moisture from which seeps into the wood, which then rots or attracts beetles to lay their eggs. The sleeper beams were nearly all completely and disastrously eaten. In turn the joists directly in contact with the sleepers had suffered the same fate, little squares of rot which radiated out from their contact patches.
Although it's true the rot came and went in areas there was hardly a joist which didn't have some crumbly part and so to save the patient we amputated everything. Where things didn't work out quite so well was a lax skip ordering routine to the extent that there wasn't one available. We contented ourselves with piling all the debris in one corner close to the door. The transference to a yellow receptacle would have to wait. The hall is now very empty looking with little left to strip out. There's plenty of loose earthy woody pulp between the sweepers which will need to be swept out too though.
The dining room's next for the chop.