MILDEW and mold and mold mites

[ztaylor]

My son lives in a rental house in Northern Calif. He and roommates are young and don't use the heater ever/no air conditioner. Single paned windows that condensate and have mild mildew around them. His bedroom has a mildew smell, he found a handful of clothing items like thick sweatshirts in closet with mold and threw them away, the rest in the closet no signs us smells horribly with mildew smell! The window itself is NOT leaking, i checked by pulling the carpet up near it, no sign of water BUT the entire room is moist 68% humidity on a digital gauge. The carpets are moist, his book pages are moist. Under his bed we found a molded backpack everything else was not molded yet under the bed so the moisture is definitely attracted to material items only so far. Mold mites crawling on these items can only be seen with a magnifying glass, super tiny white. He does have a master bathroom, normal amount of mildew in the shower that we also cleaned. We dusted the entire room to prevent food for the spores and vacuumed and telexed the mildew from the window and shower master bath. The fan in the bathroom is okay but we bought a super strong one that we can install this weekend. We are NOW running a small fan and a small Homedics hemp air filtration which lowered the humidity only to 63% . Should he start the heater? they never have used it ever, would it dry things out or just spread spores? We are ordering a de-humidifier and we heard of Theives essential oil diffuser that is guaranteed to kill spores in air. I get very itchy throat and skin when i went into his room, but my son has no symptoms so far and he lives there and sleeps right in it all. Do we really need to panic and through away all porus items if they don't have mold but still smell mildewy???? Is there a way to remove the smell from these items once we get things under control? what about certain clothing that just has a mildew smell what can we do to clean the spores and smell if they aren't washable? He has lots of record albums, cd's magazines, none of these items has mold yet, but i'm sure has spores and mildew smell penetration, can we salvage all these wonderful items and how? We did go under house and we had tremendous rains this year her in No. Calif. and found no standing water but damp soil. Haven't gone into attic yet. Is it possible that the single pane mildewed window and the moisture from the master bath and never using the heater that those 3items caused the high humidity???? or do we need to figure out a deeper scenario. The room is moist, i can feel it when walking on the carpet and touching books and boxes. HELP What do people do in this situation?

[Chad Fabry]

Open a window.

[Tom Raymond]

A house full of young men smells bad? Really?

Open a window. Or all of them.

Run the bath fan continuously. All of them if there is more than one.

Stop cooking ramen.

If the heater is gas have it checked to make sure it is vented properly.

Run a dehumidifier. An adult will have to check it regularly to empty it, or it will remove water from the air only to dump it on the floor.

Pray he moves in with a girl. She will make him clean up.

[Marc]

What do people do in this situation?

They call a mold consultant. I'm not being inconsiderate. I read your entire post. You need professional help.

Marc

[Tom Raymond]

I wasn't being inconsiderate.

A family of 4 puts 2 gallons of water into the air in an average day, average house under closed conditions. If the young men in this house aren't conditioning the air, they aren't running exhaust fans either.

A few more air turns a day will eliminate the conducive conditions. In a house full of boys that requires automatic mechanical ventilation, or a woman.

[kurt]

You got the conditions.

Bunch of stinky young people....check.

No one's cleaning anything.......check.

Not running furnace, stale air...check.

Crap piled in closets and probably everywhere else.....check.

Open crawlspace putting constant moisture into home atmosphere....double check.

Since it's a rental, you're not going to do what really needs to be done which is install a GOOD vapor barrier on the crawlspace floor. Running a dehumidifier isn't going to do much of anything until you restrict or address source issues.

The windows are a factor, but they're just the indicator, not the problem.

Or, call a mold consultant and spend money learning basic high school physics....wet moves to dry, hot moves to cold, moisture condenses on cold surfaces (windows!!), etc. and elementary hygiene (which you already apparently know).

A few fundamentals.... http://chicagohouseweb.com/mold-testing ... fallacies/

[kurt]

And yeah, what Tom said. Ventilate the place. Get exhaust fans working. Open windows. It's not complicated.

[Jim Katen]

In addition to what everyone else said, he's also got to start using the heater. Cold air has a much lower saturation point than warm air. If you raise the temperature of the indoor air, the relative humidity will drop. Don't worry about "spreading spores." They'll spread no matter what. Once the humidity is under control, the spores will be irrelevant.

Also, don't put too much hope in the sanitizing effect of girls. They're too worried about their own appearance to bother with their surroundings. During her last two years of college, my daughter shared a house with 7 other girls and one boy (who was relegated to the 5'-6" high basement and slept next to the 40-year-old furnace). The place was a terrarium.

[Bill Kibbel]

Also, don't put too much hope in the sanitizing effect of girls. They're too worried about their own appearance to bother with their surroundings. During her last two years of college, my daughter shared a house with 7 other girls and one boy (who was relegated to the 5'-6" high basement and slept next to the 40-year-old furnace). The place was a terrarium.

I've inspected many dormitories and off-campus apartment buildings (we just got a request for another 30). More often than not, it's the girl's areas that are perpetual disasters. It can get bad for the boys, but then they have a major party and clean everything up.

[Steven Hockstein]

Also, don't put too much hope in the sanitizing effect of girls. They're too worried about their own appearance to bother with their surroundings. During her last two years of college, my daughter shared a house with 7 other girls and one boy (who was relegated to the 5'-6" high basement and slept next to the 40-year-old furnace). The place was a terrarium.

I've inspected many dormitories and off-campus apartment buildings (we just got a request for another 30). More often than not, it's the girl's areas that are perpetual disasters. It can get bad for the boys, but then they have a major party and clean everything up.

Ditto that. I have a friend that won't rent to single women because they are more abusive to his property than single men. He told me about some of the things that were fished out of the drains and I gagged at the descriptions!

[John Kogel]

What Jim said. In a cool maritime climate, you need to heat the house in the winter months.

65 percent humidity is normal for this time of year. My humidity right now is about that and rises to the 70's at night. At your son's place, moisture is condensing on cold items not disturbed for weeks or months at a time, which allows mould to grow.

Heat in one end of a room is enough to get air circulating. Opening windows will let in fresh air, but this time of year it is laden with moisture, sometimes 99 percent, so there needs to be heat as well. Run the furnace for a couple of hours a day at least, and pull mattresses and sacks or piles of clothes away from the walls. Coat hangers and dressers were invented for this. []

If the furnace has not been serviced, call the landlord. He will not be impressed with mould growth in his house from negligence. Good thing you've cleaned it up.

We see this condition a lot where people are trying to survive the winter without heat. Even cavemen knew better than that. []

[gtblum]

Also, don't put too much hope in the sanitizing effect of girls. They're too worried about their own appearance to bother with their surroundings. During her last two years of college, my daughter shared a house with 7 other girls and one boy (who was relegated to the 5'-6" high basement and slept next to the 40-year-old furnace). The place was a terrarium.

I've inspected many dormitories and off-campus apartment buildings (we just got a request for another 30). More often than not, it's the girl's areas that are perpetual disasters. It can get bad for the boys, but then they have a major party and clean everything up.

Ditto that. I have a friend that won't rent to single women because they are more abusive to his property than single men. He told me about some of the things that were fished out of the drains and I gagged at the descriptions!

Me, too. Working on a punch list in a brand new college sports facility, years ago. (Hockey) Went into the men's locker room and everything was in its place. Later, in the women's locker room, the entire floor was covered with smelly, equipment and clothes. I don't know how they knew who owned what. Talk about pungent!

[mlparham]

My son lives in a rental house in Northern Calif. He and roommates are young and don't use the heater ever/no air conditioner. Single paned windows that condensate and have mild mildew around them. His bedroom has a mildew smell, he found a handful of clothing items like thick sweatshirts in closet with mold and threw them away, the rest in the closet no signs us smells horribly with mildew smell! The window itself is NOT leaking, i checked by pulling the carpet up near it, no sign of water BUT the entire room is moist 68% humidity on a digital gauge. The carpets are moist, his book pages are moist. Under his bed we found a molded backpack everything else was not molded yet under the bed so the moisture is definitely attracted to material items only so far. Mold mites crawling on these items can only be seen with a magnifying glass, super tiny white. He does have a master bathroom, normal amount of mildew in the shower that we also cleaned. We dusted the entire room to prevent food for the spores and vacuumed and telexed the mildew from the window and shower master bath. The fan in the bathroom is okay but we bought a super strong one that we can install this weekend. We are NOW running a small fan and a small Homedics hemp air filtration which lowered the humidity only to 63% . Should he start the heater? they never have used it ever, would it dry things out or just spread spores? We are ordering a de-humidifier and we heard of Theives essential oil diffuser that is guaranteed to kill spores in air. I get very itchy throat and skin when i went into his room, but my son has no symptoms so far and he lives there and sleeps right in it all. Do we really need to panic and through away all porus items if they don't have mold but still smell mildewy???? Is there a way to remove the smell from these items once we get things under control? what about certain clothing that just has a mildew smell what can we do to clean the spores and smell if they aren't washable? He has lots of record albums, cd's magazines, none of these items has mold yet, but i'm sure has spores and mildew smell penetration, can we salvage all these wonderful items and how? We did go under house and we had tremendous rains this year her in No. Calif. and found no standing water but damp soil. Haven't gone into attic yet. Is it possible that the single pane mildewed window and the moisture from the master bath and never using the heater that those 3items caused the high humidity???? or do we need to figure out a deeper scenario. The room is moist, i can feel it when walking on the carpet and touching books and boxes. HELP What do people do in this situation?

Have you ever heard of a paragraph? Your post is incomprehensible.