Almost every damp problem we see comes down to the same thing: water reaching the same patch of timber, over and over, faster than it can dry. Find that, and you have usually solved it. This guide is about where to look.
Start by watching, not by cleaning
Next time it rains properly, put a coat on and stand by the hutch for two minutes. It is the most useful thing in this entire guide and hardly anyone does it.
You are watching for water that concentrates. Rain landing evenly on a roof is what the hutch is built for. Water being funnelled onto one corner, over and over, is not. Two minutes in the wet tells you more than an hour of inspection in the dry, because in the dry the evidence has gone.
The seven usual suspects
1. Gutters and roof overhangs
A house gutter with a blocked section or an open end concentrates an entire roof's worth of rain into one falling stream. If the hutch is underneath, that stream lands in the same spot every time it rains. This is the most concentrated water source in most gardens and the one people most often miss, because the gutter is above head height and nobody looks up.
Look up. Then move the hutch, or clear the gutter.
2. Overhanging branches
Trees keep dripping long after the rain has stopped, sometimes for hours. A branch directly over the hutch turns a twenty-minute shower into half a day of dripping on the same spot. Leaves that fall and sit on the roof hold moisture against the timber and stop it drying.
Either move the hutch out from under, or keep the roof clear of leaf litter through the autumn.
3. Splashback off hard surfaces
This one is genuinely invisible until you look for it. Rain hitting a patio, path or wall bounces back up, and it bounces up onto the lower part of the hutch: the legs, the feet, the bottom few inches of panel. A hutch standing on a hard surface next to a wall can be getting wet from below and sideways as well as above.
Grass absorbs and does not bounce. If the hutch must stand on a hard surface, a bit more distance from the wall helps.
4. Ground moisture
Timber in contact with wet ground wicks water upwards. That is why your hutch has legs, and why anything that defeats the legs is a problem: a hutch sunk into soft lawn over a wet winter, or standing in a hollow where water pools, or with grass grown up around the feet holding moisture against them.
Keep the feet clear, keep it level, and if the ground is soft, stand it on slabs so it cannot sink.
5. Leaking water bottles
A slow drip keeps one patch of timber permanently wet while everything else dries out perfectly well. It is the most common cause of a single unexplained damp patch inside an otherwise sound hutch, and it is the easiest to fix.
Check the seal and the spout each time you refill. If a bottle has started to weep, move it or replace it rather than living with it. In freezing weather check more often, because ice does unkind things to seals.
6. Damp bedding
Wet bedding sits in direct contact with the floor and holds moisture against it continuously, which is the worst possible arrangement. Topping up rather than replacing leaves the damp layer at the bottom where it does the damage.
Strip it out weekly in winter rather than adding to it, and air any blankets or fabric indoors between uses.
7. Still, humid air
This one surprises people. A hutch in a shed or a garage is out of the rain, which is good, but an unheated building with the door shut stays damp for weeks at a time, and there is no breeze to carry moisture away. Timber needs moving air to dry, not just shelter from rain.
The same applies outdoors: a hutch pushed hard against a fence or wall has no airflow behind it, so the back panel stays damp long after the front has dried. Leave a hand's width of space behind and beside it.
About covers
A cover keeps rain off, which is exactly what it is for, and on a wet windy night it does a proper job.
Timber also needs to dry out. So the sensible pattern is cover on for the weather, off when the weather allows. Peel it back on a dry day and let the air get to the wood rather than leaving it sealed up from October to March.
Where to put a hutch, if you have the choice
- Out of the prevailing wind and driving rain, which in most of Britain means not facing south-west.
- Not under a gutter, a downpipe outlet, or a tree.
- Not tight against a wall or fence. A hand's width, minimum.
- On firm level ground, with the legs clear of soil and long grass.
- Somewhere you walk past regularly, because the problems you spot early are the ones that stay small.
The two-minute check, once a month
Run your hand over the inside of the back panel and the floor, particularly the corners. Look at the underside of the roof. Check the joints, because water collects where two pieces of timber meet. Look at the feet and the bottom of the legs.
You are not looking for anything specific. You are learning what normal feels like, so that a change registers. If you find dark marks, press the timber with your thumb and compare it with a clean part of the same panel. Firm timber with surface marks will usually clean off. Soft, swollen or separating timber is a different matter, and we would rather see photographs than have you scrubbing at it.
The full walkthrough is in our guide to mould in a rabbit hutch.