Reparing rotten framework after water damage

I've just discovered some water damage caused by my washing machine.

It was a slow leak and the wall cavity between the laundry and the family room is full of mold and the timber is rotting. The damaged section of internal wall is around 3 meters long

The rotting also extends to the external wall (brick veneer constructed home), around 1.5 meters in each direction from the internal wall (imagine a T shape with the long part of the T the internal wall and the sort part the external wall.)

A lot of the bottom is rotten, as well around around 30cm of some wall studs.

From what I understand, the basic concept of repair is to "sister" each existing stud, either all the way to the top plate for load bearing walls, or 1/2 way for non-load bearing walls. I'm assuming you do this 1 stud at a time. You nail the sister stud in, cut the old rotten timber away (well above the rotting line), put new timber in place of the rotten part and nail that to the sister stud.

Assuming I have that basic procedure right (please correct me if I',m wrong), it sounds straight-forward so far, but how do you deal with the bottom plate? The only procedure I can think of for replacing the bottom plate is to do it as I'm sistering each stud. Ie, cut the bottom plate out between 2 studs, make a "U" shape which consists of 2 new studs attached to around 550mm of bottom plate and slide that in, then fasten bottom plate to the concrete slab.

Does that sound about right?

Does anyone have any good references on the subject?

Cheers,
dave







The house has a corrugated iron roof on timber trusses, therefore, part of the external wall is load bearing.


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