How to Stop Mold from Growing In Your House

so I got a call from my friend a couple weeks ago and said hey Matt can you give me the reference for somebody that can help me with some growth on my basement walls some black stuff was grown in there and I said you know I probably need to come over and take a look at it on today's video we're going to show you what's happened how to fix it and also not only how to do it right to begin with but also some tips that might help you for upgrading your house let's go take a look [Music] okay so we're in my buddy's man cave his house was built about 20 years ago but this is a detached structure out by his pool 10 years old and we've got a gorgeous home theater Upstairs Downstairs behind me here we've got an incredible wine room and he's got a guest bedroom down here and this is why I got the phone call inside this guest bedroom behind this wall we had a little bit of growth we're not sure what it was some black stuff growing on the paper face in of his drywall you can actually see just a little bit of it right here on the base this kind of Blackish stuff again we don't know what that is exactly it may be mold it may not be but we know how to solve it here's the deal anytime you see mold growth in a house mold needs three things to grow it needs a temperature it needs a food source and it needs a water source now our houses are full of food sources the more broken down the cellulose is which is a great food source the more mold is going to like it and grow on it so the facing that's paper on your drywall is a great spot to grow mold you're going to see more mold growth on the paper of the drywall than you would let's say on the 2x4 more mold growth is going to happen on OSB than plywood the more broken down the wood the more the mold likes it number two we need a temperature mold likes an elevated temperature typically the temperatures that we like are the temperatures that mold likes as well so 70° and above you're going to have more mold growth the hotter it gets the more active it's going to be so the first two we can't do much about the third one the water source is the biggest thing we can control as a builder or as a homeowner for a house number one we want to make sure we don't have any bulk water leaks we want to make sure our windows are not leaking that's why you see me in these videos taking such great care to install those in a totally waterproof way we want to make sure our houses don't have roof leaks condensate leaks all those things can lead to some growth we don't have that issue here what we have here is an elevated humidity you know we're in this basement space these walls behind me are fully underground and we've got a walk out here we've had a really wet couple months and so likely the concrete walls and floor here are fairly wet some of that moisture is migrating into the space and it's not getting relieved by the HVAC system so when I visited 3 weeks ago I saw a humidity in this room of about 70% anytime we get above 60% in our houses that's when mold's going to have be more likely to grow and the higher we get to 80 or above it's really going to be active now we put a dehumidifier in this room a couple of weeks ago it's been pulling water out of the space and now look at what our humidity is we're at 41% we're not going to have any activity at 41% this Situation's been totally taken care of however the house has a couple of other areas that are issues that may be contributing towards this so let's pick this up up in the attic upstairs okay so why are we in the Attic we determined we had a humidity area in the basement this attic has some problems as well number one we wanted to add a whole house dehumidifier and not just a point source dehumidifier it's a pain to have to empty that bucket all the time here's what I do on my new construction houses which was a perfect fit for this we put a whole house dehumidifier this is an ultra a 98h it'll be able to dehumidify the entire man cave together at once and now we can Pump dehumidified Air down into that space through the HVAC system we don't need to stand dehumidifier but I found some other problems when I was in the attic here that are exacerbating the issue down in the basement number one air leakiness when I op when I open these attic stairs I noticed right away this is an uninsulated staircase and it's not weather stripped it would be as if we left our front door open on our house and expected our hbac system to catch up this is a terrible system in so many houses this needs to be insulated it needs to be weather stripped and air sealed the next thing I noticed was there's several areas in this attic that are either uninsulated or we can see directly into the house so we've got a bunch of air ceilings that needs to happen up here and why does this need to happen let me review for you what happens when we've got an unconditioned attic like this with duct work running through you know in the summertime this attic is going to be 130° we've got air conditioned air inside this duct work at 55° and there's going to be some small cracks and holes in this duct work all duct work has some amount of leakage when this duct turns on and blows air through it that air leaks out it depressurizes the house and now the house is sucking air basically wherever it can and that air is getting sucked right through the staircase so now when our air leaks out here we're sucking 130° air right through the staircase area that's adding to the humidity load for this space it's adding to the heat load it's terribly inefficient and terribly uncomfortable and probably is going to add to that high humidity issue which caused the problem in the basement so I brought my friends from Fox service they're a local weatherization company there's companies like this all across the nation that can help you with this we're going to tackle some of the low hanging fruit here so that our dehumidifier can can do its job properly all right guys so here's the takeaway we're just about wrapped up on this project you know we got called over here for some microbial growth in the basement and as we learned earlier there's three things that needs to grow and only one of them do we have much control over that's the humidity or the water source that that needs I think we've got that under control now we've got that whole house dehumidifier upstairs making sure all the air inside this house is below 60% humidity at all times so we've got that under control and oh by the way while we're doing that we've had the chance to upgrade the filters on the house we had these 1in filters that were right here on the ceiling before now we've got a nice thick filter chassis we've gone from that really junky 1-in filter that's probably MV 6 to now a standard Merve 11 or we can do a MF 13 in the same chassis so now we can filter out those very fine particles the allergens the mold spores all those things can get trapped at that filter and not get blown through the house and we've done a really good job of air sealing you know this weatherization crew tested in and tested out they made sure that we had a good duck blast test before we started so we knew what our Baseline was we ended up at 12% loss which means that our th CFM furnace upstairs was losing 120 CFM to the attic that's cold air that we paid for that's now lost but even worse when that air leaks out we're sucking air out of the house air has to come back in to make it up and the easiest path was like I showed you earlier around that attic stair or through that big hole where the projectors going in this room there was a lot of hot and humid air getting back in here that dehumidifier is going to have a hard time working if we leave the front door open in effect we've shut the front door we've made sure that our envelope is as airtight as possible we've conditioned and filtered the air we're going to take care of that microbial growth but we've also increased greatly our comfort on this house and man we're going to make a big impact on the Energy Efficiency here too if you're building new the takeaway for you is bring those Ducks into your conditioned space that way you won't have a a lot of these problems to begin with and also do the best job of air sealing you can while it's under construction way harder to do it now in a retrofit 10 years later if you're watching this and you've got an old house like this there's there's houses like this all over Texas and all over the US you might consider adding separate dehumidification and a lot of the low hanging fruit when it comes to air sealing that we did you could do that yourself or of course you get a weatherization contractor to do that hey thanks for joining me today I hope you learned something we'll see you next time on the build show [Music] one [Music]

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 38,763

Keywords: mold, mold growth, how to fix mold, how to get rid of mold, how to get rid of mold in my house, how to remove mold, how to prevent mold growth, mold issue, i have a mold issue, build, moisture control, austin construction, mold prevention, matt risinger, remove mold, mold remediation, black mold, black mould

Id: CK4xr7faQYA

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 02 2016