I discovered a leaking toilet yesterday, which further investigation showed mold problems underneath my flooring. I need to pull up some carpet, tile and wood flooring to investigate to see how much mold is there and how to mitigate or cure the situation. I’m a bit fearful of the can of worms that I may be opening, especially worried that any company I have look at it will try to strike fear in my heart and sell me a huge, expensive and possibly not totally necessary job. But also of course fearful of the health risks from mold. I live in a very dry climate in Colorado. Any advice?
Soak it with a bleach solution and forget about it.
“Black Mold” fear is way overblown.
I’d suggest using Borax, as you’d get in the laundry detergent aisle of a grocery store. Mild, gentle solution of Borax in water will stop the mold and keep it from coming back, without damage to your house or lungs.
We first learned about it from a chemically savvy guy–he might have been a college professor–who we talked to for a few hours, while we did laundry at a marina in NW Washington state. In the two decades since, we’ve used borax solution to stop nasties and keep them from coming back. For instance, in our basement we’d spray the wooden walls with the stuff, and the mold stays away. You can’t see any residue, there’s no scent, etc.
ETA: It goes without saying you need to stop any flowing water situation, like leaking toilets and/or add a dehumidifier. But, isn’t it already really dry in CO?
I would mask up and take a scrub brush to the mold also. I did that in my last home for some mold in the basement. That and adding a dehumidifier did the trick of defeating the mold.
I’m so happy this house is dry. Central Air really seems to help vs. vaunted baseboard.
We live in a high humidity environment (on the shore of a Great Lake) and had a huge mold infestation hit parts of our basement and localized sectors of our first floor. NOT black mold fortunately, but it still needed to be dealt with. It was not causing us significant health problems, though it may have been aggravating our mild chronic seasonal allergy symptoms. Moldy walls in dark corners, moldy carpets, moldy and damp books, magazines, documents, etc. etc. Ugh.
We hired a mold remediation specialist because we had a good thousand square feet or more that needed addressing. We also had to go through a LOT of belongings (our house was still storing some stuff handed down from great-grandparents) and decide which belongings we’d clean ourselves or pay to have cleaned and disinfected, or throw out. We ended up having two huge dumpster loads of stuff we decided to toss rather than clean up. It did give me a chance to downsize my huge library, getting rid of a lot of the popular yet trashy books which I didn’t value.
We also had to install two huge dehumidifiers, tied to the AC systems on the north and south end of the house. The goal was to provide pretty much continuous low humidity environment.
It was a moderate PITA and expensive, over $20k. But it did improve things in the house. And our allergy symptoms are less. Things smell better too. That was over a decade ago now, and there have been no recurrences.
Of course, some stuff got tossed that we now regret losing, but at least we debulked the stuff that our kids would have had to deal with had we hung on to them until our deaths.
Sounds like ours was more of an extreme case than yours however.
Thorough soaking in bleach will kill the mycelium (the visible tubulae of the fungus) but will not eradicate the spores which will propagate and become embedded in virtually any non-ceramic materials. Concerns about mold, and ‘black mold’ in particular produces mycotoxins that can create respiratory symptoms that are difficult to treat. Although a dry climate and/or conditioned air can reduce growth, mold that has infiltrated under flooring or behind walls, and has some source of leakage or condensation (even just from a lack of air circulation) will propagate with surprising speed. Mold is not something to ignore or half-ass unless you don’t mind gutting a significant portion of your house to remediate it when it comes time to sell or when it develops so much that it starts coming through the drywall.
At a minimum, the o.p. needs to pull up the flooring and investigate the extent, and probably get an evaluation from multiple contractors for any required remediation. Just dumping bleach on it might make it go away temporarily but it will likely come back with a vengeance the first time it gets a new source of moisture.
Stranger
What’s below the toilet? Crawl space? Living space? 2 very different scenarios. First of all pull the toilet and expose the subfloor. At least then you’ll know the scope of the problem. The subfloor is probably ruined even if it’s not moldy, especially if it’s OSB. Cut out any damaged subfloor in a careful rectangle with 2 edges on joists. Pull out any damaged insulation. Tell us what you see…. If the joists are moldy you can do your best with borax and then encapsulate with a mold blocking primer. If you find rot, well, then we’ll talk some more. The arid environment is working in your favor.