Mould in rooms

[Sashascot]

Suffering from mould in upstairs , have flat roof .Any suggestions or recommendations ? Help needed urgently .

[trevnhil]

We have been in flat roofed houses and suffered to some degree with mould on the corners of the walls and the ceilings. You can only get rid of it by washing the affected areas either with bleach or with bought mildew remover..
To keep it away try to get the room/s as dry as possible by ventilation when you can open the windows on a sunny day. Or by using a dehumidifier..
It is the water content of the air settling on the cold surfaces.

[Firefly]

Yes ventilation is the key, but not easy when It's so cold, central heating and a dehumidifier help. I also understand that if you don't like bleach based products, vinegar works too.

Jackie

[manxie]

Also if you are leaving property empty or you have rooms you are not using pull out beds furniture ect from the walls let air circulate it works as I have proven

[Lincoln]

I have treated two apartments for Damp and mold (fungi) I washed all down with soap and water. and followed up with a detol wash. Then sealed with a DAMP sealer followed by two coats of acrilic emulsion. No damp has returned in the first apartment after six months. The other was only done recently. I advised the owners to always allow a free flow of air through the apartments.

[jeba]

vinegar works too.

No, mould is resistant to acids.

[trevnhil]

In the' maids' link the Baking Soda remedy is interesting as the second application is said to prevent an occurrence

[jeba]

vinegar works too.

No, mould is resistant to acids.

Yes it does.

https://www.maids.com/cleaning-hacks/3- ... -cleaners/

It is often recommended to use a vinegar solution in the fight against mold. However, this is usually not useful

This is a quote translated with google from an advisory brochure issued by the German authority for environment protection. Source: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/de ... haus_0.pdf

When I had a mould problem I asked a specialist for advise and he told me to best use wall paint with a pH value of at least 10 or higher like e. g. silicate based paint.

[jeba]

You can indeed purchase mould resistant paint, but take it from me it is not infallible and the mould will return. And it would seem there is a raft of information out there that would disagree with the Herman Authorities for Environmentsl Protect in regard to the properties of vinegar.

Well, I can only tell you that I was told by the owner of a company who specialises in treatment and prevention of mould that he agreed and said if the pH of your wall paint is high enough mould won´t return.

[galexinda]

The apartment block where I live has damp and mould in many of the apartments and two owners have had air vents installed as they use their properties as a holiday home and only visit for short periods of time each year. Even the apartments that have full-time residents have this problem but they do not ventilate their properties adequately at the best of times and when they have the ACs or electric heaters on, the windows are closed. Sometimes you can see the condensation running down their windows.

Due to my breathing problems our windows/patio doors are open slightly year round - yes, even when it's pouring with rain because the frame of the flyscreens prevents ingress of water. We use a gas heater as our main source of heat, but keep the room warm, not hot so I think this means there are not the extremes of temperature that may influence damp conditions.

[jeba]

We use a gas heater as our main source of heat

Gas heaters will contribute to the problem because they produce water. Probably better to use your aircon for heating.

[MacManiac]

We had winter mould and damp problems for years and got royally fed up with it. My landlord consulted a structural engineer and he proposed removing all the tiles around the house, digging down and removing/replacing all the concrete there, insulating the whole area and that included removing the rendering on the outside of the house (up to a height of one metre). A massive job ... and then the outside and the inside of the house was redecorated (no doubt with special anti-mould paint). The final step was to install a wood burning stove in the fireplace.

The building work took place a year ago, and the stove was installed a couple of weeks ago (once we were sure the building work had been successful). In the last year there has not been the slightest sign of damp or mould (even in the favourite places in which it always used to appear). The whole enterprise cost our landlord a small fortune, and we are very grateful he stuck with it. But not a quick or cheap fix by any means ...

[Jimgward]

The main building methods in Cyprus are the root of the problem. Often single block walls with plaster inside and out. The tops of the walls at edges of flat roofs, are concrete capped and none of this is waterproof.

We have cavity walls in the UK for more than just an insulation barrier. Older wall ties had a metal twist in the centre, so even water running along the tie would fall into the cavity.

We have a house in Cyprus with cavity walls, plus plasterboard but still get occasional damp patches appear around window bottoms and upper floor wall top edges. All down to water seeping in from building methods. We dont have any rising damp or large areas, except once when we realised that in one year, the roof covering had deteriorated quickly - it was painted with that silver paint. We had them redone with stone chips as a reflector...

[STELIOSBWFC]

I have treated two apartments for Damp and mold (fungi) I washed all down with soap and water. and followed up with a detol wash. Then sealed with a DAMP sealer followed by two coats of acrilic emulsion. No damp has returned in the first apartment after six months. The other was only done recently. I advised the owners to always allow a free flow of air through the apartments.

That is correct Lincoln as mould spores spread and airing will help. My Dad was a paint and decorator and always did a mix at houses he worked at called egg shell a mixture of gloss and emulsion after the area was treated. Good air circulation after a hot summer is the key to this when it gets colder and ventilation. Aircon causes moisture in the hot months that sinks in to the plaster and when it gets colder it grows. Hope this helps folks.

[trevnhil]

I have never heard of Aircon causing moisture. In fact there is a dehumidifying mode that take moisture out of the air... The water that is drained from the aircon machine down a pipe to the outside of the building, is water taken out of the inside air..

[Paul]

Just washed our wall with bleach and water and a few hours later the Mold was gone, nice clean walls.
I washed the wall and just let it air dry.

[WHL]

We had a problem in the bathrooms, our own fault, as always closed the window to soon after showering in winter time .. painted the ceilings with a special anti mould paint, bought from orinos, not sure if they have a shop in Paphos? and never had a problem since.

[trevnhil]

Orinos Have a shop on Polis road roughly opposite Lidl I think..

[cyprusmax47]

Ouch...the thought of having windows open while showering in winter time Not long after we moved here, we installed a large Vent-Axia fan in both bathrooms. Not an easy task as it obviously involves drilling equally large diameter holes high up in bathroom walls. However, it was worth it, as most moist air is drawn out of the room by the time you have finished showering.

I have installed in both bathrooms small powerful DC fans, driven by solar modules and connected with my solar air-heating system which blows 50-60 c hot dry air into the bathrooms and by closing the doors, these rooms are the warmest in the whole house. When having a shower I open the bathroom window some cm's and all the humidity disappears within minutes. I love it as the humidity in the house is down to 40-50% RH in Winter.

Max

[kansas]

We also invested in fans with summer and winter settings and put these on every morning for about 30 minutes, and we open all the doors and windows to ventilate. We have had the same experiences as most of the people who have added to this post. We ditched the gas fire within 2 years of moving in and now use only electric heating which we know is expensive but works for us. Our dehumidifier is on for most of the day when the house is closed up and it can run on an economy setting so switches itself off when it reaches the optimum level. We open up all the wardrobe doors too. We also bought from Amazon 3 humidifier meters which show temperature, humidity with max/min histories. These have proved invaluable, e.g. when the humidity is over 70% we know what do to bring it down. After every hot shower the room is kept closed for at least an hour with the extractor on. One of the bedroom windows is left open slightly when we sleep. Fingers crossed but we no longer have clammy soft furnishings or clothes. Our dehumidifier collects about a full tank (5 litres) every 3 days.