Mold in homes

[Tero]

There were several Finnish articles in the last week about the uselessness of mold clean up. When mold has been neglected for years, it has grown into the pores of the wood or other surface. They have been shutting down and cleaning up schools in Finland for years, the usefulness of which is now doubtful. It seems we just have to put up with dry air in winter to prevent the mold.

The EPA has tips
http://www.epa.gov/mold/preventionandcontrol.html

the most important of which is to clean up after all floods. At this point washing wood and panels with diluted bleach may be of some use.

[Blind groper]

That's because no one is allowed to use potent fungicides. What you need s something that leave a strongly fungicidal residue. You cannot buy this, but I have a few containers of 2(Thiocyanomethylthio)benzothiazole. Wipe that stuff over the moldy timber, and the parts showing will die. It leaves a residue and stops the mold growing back.

Of course, for us ignorant consumers, only things like bleach or a quaternary ammonium compound are permitted for sale. They kill the superficial mold, but the surviving mold mass beneath simply grows out again.

[Jason]

That's because no one is allowed to use potent fungicides.

Largely because they were cited as causing serious illness or death in the unfortunate future tenents for some time and to a lesser degree because they're damaging to the environment.

[Blind groper]

That's because no one is allowed to use potent fungicides.

Largely because they were cited as causing serious illness or death in the unfortunate future tenents for some time and to a lesser degree because they're damaging to the environment.

Actually, the main reason is because the world is full of morons who cannot read basic safety instructions. I use 'dangerous' chemicals all the time, that are banned to the general public. It is a doddle to use them safely. You just have to take a few very basic and obvious precautions. Then enters the idiot......

[Rum]

We had dry rot (paradoxically caused by damp wood) in our floorboards and it spread into the walls. Luckily a member here suggested that if we played it right our house insurance would pay for it..and it did.

About a third of the floor had to come up and plaster had to be removed from several walls. The whole lot was then drenched in some nasty chemical, which smelled for several days. We had to get the dogs out for a couple of days. The whole lot is now guaranteed for ten years. So they have confidence, it would seem, in their chemicals,

As an aside I wish we had moved out for the month it took. The insurance company would have paid I learned later.

[Jason]

Then enters the idiot......

[Blind groper]

We had dry rot (paradoxically caused by damp wood) in our floorboards and it spread into the walls. .

Yeah. That particular fungus is a real bummer. Technically it is not a mold, since it digests cellulose, making it a part of the basidiomycetes. It needs a little moisture to get started, but then can produce all the water it needs from the digestion process. Dry rot and its allies are the reason no one should build a house using untreated wood.

[MiM]

We got suspicious, when both parents and kids have been more ill than normal for quite some time so we moved out of our apartment in October. Meanwhile we started to repair a shower room, with slow water leakage into the floor. Drying that floor took 5+ weeks, but now we have a nicely renovated shower room. Also installed new fresh air vents in every room, to prevent air to get sucked through the floor. No obvious change in health status while living away, and no visible ill effects from moving back.

There was a small piece in the newspaper about the floor "exploding" in ED:s school (that she doesn't currently attend). Official explanation was something about "cold air". My ass, that kind of cracking comes from water swelling and nothing else.

[Blind groper]

So they have confidence, it would seem, in their chemicals,

With very poor reason.
I have done a lot of work with wood preservatives, and I can tell you that nothing merely soaked into wood can do more than treat the surface. If you have fungus penetrating into the wood below the surface, merely soaking a nasty chemical onto the surface of the wood will do next to nothing.

However, they may have have confidence that they have removed all the wood that has fungus growing in it. If so, soaking the exposed wood with a potent fungicide may help, since a fungus spore has to land and germinate. A toxic wood surface will prevent that spore germinating.

The best approach, though, is to use vacuum pressure treated timber to build with. If the timber is pressure treated, the preservative chemical penetrates right through the sapwood, and protects it all.

My wife and I had a new house built for us 5 years ago. I told the builder that I wanted every last stick of timber being used to be pressure treated with CCA preservative. The house cost us $NZ 700,000. When it was finished, I asked the builder how much extra money we had paid to get every piece of timber treated. He worked it out on a calculator $NZ 300. That is what I call a no brainer!

[Tero]

Are you allowed to use pressure treated lumber in all parts of a house? I sawed some some big planks with a circular saw once, did not like the fumes at all, smoke on the blade.

I think they used to use copper salts.

[Blind groper]

To Tero

CCA treatment means putting copper. chrome, arsenic salts into timber using a cycle of vacuum and pressure in a pressure vessel. Obviously the CCA salts are toxic. But that is not your problem. That side of things is handled by the business operation that treats the wood. The only toxic hazard to you and your family is if you burn the wood and ingest the smoke. Obviously, using CCA treated wood on a barbecue on which you cook food is a really, really bad idea. Using it in your fireplace at home creates toxic smoke that is a very poor gift to your neighbors.

But it is very easy to avoid burning the stuff. Having it as part of your home will do not harm whatever to you, your family, or anyone else. Researchers have gone so far as to create sawdust from CCA treated timber and put it into the food of laboratory animals. Eating it did no measurable harm whatever. The reason is that the salts are so tightly bound chemically to the wood, that only burning can release the salts.

If your home is based on CCA treated timber, you will never have rot, or insect borers creating problems. The timber will outlast the home. The toxic salts stay tightly bound into the wood and do no harm to people or the environment.

[JimC]

To Tero

CCA treatment means putting copper. chrome, arsenic salts into timber using a cycle of vacuum and pressure in a pressure vessel. Obviously the CCA salts are toxic. But that is not your problem. That side of things is handled by the business operation that treats the wood. The only toxic hazard to you and your family is if you burn the wood and ingest the smoke. Obviously, using CCA treated wood on a barbecue on which you cook food is a really, really bad idea. Using it in your fireplace at home creates toxic smoke that is a very poor gift to your neighbors.

But it is very easy to avoid burning the stuff. Having it as part of your home will do not harm whatever to you, your family, or anyone else. Researchers have gone so far as to create sawdust from CCA treated timber and put it into the food of laboratory animals. Eating it did no measurable harm whatever. The reason is that the salts are so tightly bound chemically to the wood, that only burning can release the salts.

If your home is based on CCA treated timber, you will never have rot, or insect borers creating problems. The timber will outlast the home. The toxic salts stay tightly bound into the wood and do no harm to people or the environment.

I've used it (we simply call it treated pine here) for every outdoor carpentry project (like supports for vines etc) that I've ever done at our place. BG is right, the only danger comes if it burns.

[Jason]

It's been banned in Ontario (possibly all of Canada) for use on docks and such because it poisons the water, kills fish, and generally wreaks havoc on the aquatic ecosystem. But then we're probably just idiots..

Treated lumber is only used for fencing, decks, and the like. It is not used in building new homes. In Canada and in my experience.

[Tero]

I've used treated lumber to fix some exterior parts of the house. Where water runs down. I've never found treated lumber in the house.

In the days when houses were built to last, cheap pine was not used.

[Blind groper]

It's been banned in Ontario (possibly all of Canada) for use on docks and such because it poisons the water, kills fish, and generally wreaks havoc on the aquatic ecosystem. But then we're probably just idiots..

I suspect that the truth is it has been banned after action by activists who falsely claimed it poisons the water, kills fish, and wreaks ecosystem havoc. Sorry, but that is all bullshit. CCA is so damn solidly fixed to timber that any leaching into sea water is ultra slow, and none of those damages ever occur.

You can see this by the fact that CCA treated wharf piles are still intact after 50 years in the sea. Untreated piles rot in several years. The only reason treated timber lasts so long in the sea is because the CCA does not leach out at any rate liable to cause problems. Most of it is still in the timber 50 years later.

Here in New Zealand, CCA treated timber is the only timber used in wharf piles, because it is the only timber that lasts so long. I can assure you that it does not have any harmful effects on marine life. In fact, the wharf piles support a mass of encrusting marine growths, and this supports a greater marine biomass than could happen without the wharf piles being there.