Mold !

[Dimension tile]

Got a call from a client of mine asking if I could look at a couple of commercial showers in a locker room. The problem is that there is an adjacent storage room that seems to have water leaking into it from these showers. So off I went. The sight was awful. The caulking was peelin out of the joints and mold was heavy. Joints didn't seem to be broken or missing but again the mold was heavy. The question I have is this...
If there's mold on the outside, is there mold on the inside, behind the tile?
What are your thoughts guys ?

[doitright]

Hi Jay

How are the walls constructed (block, drywall over studs, etc.)? Usually mold is coming from behind.

[muley]

Whats all the fuss about mold? I get it on my cheese and I cut it off and eat the cheese. I got mold all over the inside of my fridge in the trailor after it was off the jobsite and unplugged for a week. I cleaned it and have drank and eaten food from the fridge without issue. I think this whole mold thing is just a scam.

[mosquito]

yeah, but who wants a bathroom that smells like moldy cheese?

[Dimension tile]

Yeah and I guess the guys that clean it up just wear the suits and breathing aperatus for kicks too !
The walls seem to be constructed out of either drywall or cbu. The building is old enough to have merited muded walls but the deflection and hollowness confirm that they're not. They mesure 3'-0x3'-0, 4x4 on the walls and a mud floor with 2x2.

[doitright]

Hi Guys

Mold is a very serious issue, and shouldn't be taken lightly. Especially if you are the contractor for someones establishment and/or residence. There are people who have adverse reaction when exposed to particular types.

My dad (who is in real estate), recently had a client whose house flooded. All the furniture was removed, and then a mold remediation team came in and did their thing. All the furniture was replaced, and the owner moved back in. She started getting very ill. It wound up that no one took into consideration that mold had formed on the furniture.

I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't want to be liable for that case. Even though these incidences are isolated, with todays sue happy society, I can't afford to be at the receiving end of the stick, because I chose that this mold thing was a farce and closed my eyes to it.

Hi Jay

If I were you, I would have someone who specializes in analyzing mold, predetermine if this project is safe to touch (especially since it's in a commercial enviornment).

[geniescience]

Mold kills you just like any other gas will after a time. More slowly than mustard gas in WW1. Slowly.

I had water leaking from a copper sweat connection, for years. Mold built up.

Either you have water from the shower or from another source. Not a difficult thing to say. Finding the leak can be real hard.

Back to square 1: if you think mold is nothing serious, remember that you happen to be under-reacting at this time, and that your immune system is not over-reacting. Good for you. Bully for you. Fine for you. For now.

At some point, when something more serious than fridge surface mold hits your body, you will react. Meanwhile, please don't try to achieve anything by ridiculing people whose immune systems are more sensitive than yours is today.

Building managers in large facilities have an expression they use to describe the people who notice air-borne chemical irritants before others do. They call them Tweety Birds. That is a way of saying Canary, like in a coal mine, where canaries were used as highy accurate instruments to measure the amount of toxin / poison / crap in the air and to alert them when to get out in order to save their lives. So, the expression is humor and also respectful, because it admits that people who are slightly more sensitive than others are OK to have around. Their reactions are valid and useful to have.

Mold is a living organism that shits by sending its defecation out into the air. Breathing this is OK for some people. Small quantities are OK for many people. The excrement is known as a toxin to all who study the organism. Other living organisms do not enjoy eating or ingesting another organism's shit. Hope this clears the air, about why mold is no good. It is not just the spores (seeds) that irritate sensitive body parts like lungs and nostrils and eyeballs, it is the toxins, the defecatory output, the excrement, the skat, the shit. Known scientifically as mycotoxins since they come from the myco- type of organism. Complex chemicals, airborne.

[Dimension tile]

Ok so here's why I posted the question in the first place. As soon as I saw the showers, I refused to do any work until he had a mold abatement team come in and clean it up so needless to say I fully agree with John and David. I did however want to see what others had to say on this topic. I'm sure that I've opened a can of worms for my client by demanding someone clean it up before I do anything or he can find some "shmoe" to go in and do something rediculous...like pull it all apart without the proper precautions causing further contamination. BTW its a Government building...
Thanks guys for your thoroughness.

[John Bridge]

Well, now that it's all said and done . . .

I respect the views of everyone who has posted here, but Muley is right. The Mold scare is just that. It's overblown to the point that it's ludicrous. I have been "abating" mold for over three decades with my bare hands. I've just recently turned 65 and had myself in for a complete physical to include chest xrays. No problems whatever.

It's funny, but before the mega-judgement here in Texas that started all of this there were virtually NO mold abatement companies to be found. Then, overnight you started seeing cheap signs posted on light poles up and down the roads. All of a sudden where there had been none, there were now hundreds of mold "experts." How did they come about? Who trained them? Nobody.

It's a huge scam. That's all it is. One of my sons is asthmatic, has been since infancy, and he has reations to high pollen counts and high mold spore counts, but these are airborne, and they occur daily. People without respiratory problems are for the most part not affected, and if they are, the effects are temporary and not life threatening at all. It is a fact, that the mold scam artists have not been able to get even one medical doctor to state that there is any proven danger from mold spores. Doctors will just tell you there is no science to that effect.

I've seen people put out of their homes for six months and longer because some theiving idiot came in and found mildew in a bathroom or under the dishwasher in the kitchen. I've seen beautiful homes torn apart and then left for the owners to put back together. (They hire a contractor to do so.) It's a rip-off, folks.

I'll leave this very scientific discussion now, but I'll post a picture of some "killer mold" (stachybotris) that I abated with my bare hands. I scooped it into plastic bags and took it to the sanitary fill. If you don't like it, sue me.

[John Bridge]

And here is another little moldy mess I abated in the same manor. This one is very recent -- about a month ago or so. This shower pan material was placed in a "recessed" concrete shower floor about 16 years ago. The "mechanics" cut the material down in the corners to ensure that it would leak from day one. Addtionally, the "leave out" around the trap was never filled in with mortar.

I personally pulled all this gunk out of there, bagged it and carried it to the dump. Instant, if not very pleasant, abatement.

[jvcstone]

I have to agree with Mr. Bridge on this one, with one little caveat. It does seem like a very small percentage of the population reacts badly to the spores given off by certain exotic types of mold. A very small percentage of the population reacts badly to peanut butter also. But since we are constantly surrounded with mold spores of all sorts, if the stuff was so toxic, we would be facing extinction from it rather than some of the other idiotsy going on. The judgement that was awarded in the Texas case was obcene, and a total rip off of the insurance company. Now we all get to pay for one persons greed (they had pulled the same scam up east somewhere also, BTW) by home owners insurance rates that are ridiculous. And some companies will not insure a home now if there has ever been a water damage claim on it. So you pay your premiums, and when the hot water heater up in the attic dumps a load, you bite the bullet and pay for the repairs out of pocket. What a world-eh??

A little bleach will take care of the mold, but if you don't find the water source, it will start growing right back.

JVC

[oogabooga]

Yep, chalk another one up for the nerds and ninnies, very soon you won't be able to do anything without the authority of some bureaucratic bollocks agency. We have the same sort of mentality here in NZ. It's just some stupid mold man!.

Rob.

[Nash]

I've got some personal experience here.

I know personally some people who had a pretty bad experience. Bleeding from the ears ect.

I don't think it's ALL a scam. I do feel that some things can become scare tactics though.

I do know that if you happen to live in CA you have to protect your work from water damage and mold for 10 years. It's code.

Reguardless of where you live, if you get into a lawsuit over mold. You loose.

It's the asbestos of the 21st centry.

Reguardless of what our views happen to be.

[geniescience]

Read and re-read the posts by John Bridge. Good photos, good text.

Problem is ... hmm I'll get to that later.

I also personally put my hands in mold and I removed it all, and I survived and in fact I did not feel any effects. This is the truth. I am not ridiculing and I am not paraphrasing someone else for comic effect.

I had never heard of mold abatement until I signed in HERE! The scam is the who-trained-you experts in so-called abatement. Granted. Yes I agree. Within limits.

The fact that mold can hurt your immune system very badly and make your body really suffer is still true. Please realize everybody, that John B did not dispute that. Do a few web searches on this topic. Start with the word mycotoxin, and you'll see how much a killer it is. Killer? Yes, here is an example: Farm animals live in a controlled environment so it is easy to spot what is killing them and to work on changing that. Since they are so penned in, farm animals are more susceptible to this kind of problem (mycotoxins, from mold also known as fungi). Humans roam every day, and so it is harder to "control" to spot what we ingest and then work on changing it for the better.

Some people can smell rats or mice in a house long before others can. Some people can smell when someone who just arrived in a room has smoked a cigarette five minutes before entering, since their breath is different. Some people really do have noses like dogs and maybe they can even describe what they smell. So, it is no stretch to say that some people's bodies react to some mycotoxins swiftly, and they may say it is a smell, or they may have other reactions, more discreet and subconscious than a smell in the nose. Eventually it can turn into a sickness. If they stay in that building long enough. Or if their immune system goes haywire, which can happen and does happen.

In large enough doses and for long enough time, anyone's body will react to complex chemicals. Some people develop a form of immunity, where the body just accepts it and uses some energy to contain it. Other people develop a stronger reaction, and they may have to leave that environment or else suffer from their bodies' immune system going into High Gear. Unfortunately you can't reason with your immune system, and it only seems to have a small number of stable states, one being Low Gear, and the other main one being High Gear. There is not much in between. There is no dimmer.

So, you may have a serious problem or illness if you spend a LOT of time in one building, that has some mold, and it will be worse if that one building just happens to be a large building without windows that open, so the air is handled internally. Imagine you work from a home office in your downtown concrete condo building. If you don't get out on the weekend, you are a sitting duck. Breathing the same air ALL the time.

Back to JB: listen man I'm sure you realize you said more than just one single message in your posts. Perhaps that mold as mold being a problem as mold may all just be a hoax too. And the guy named Muley was saying that fridge mold was not a big deal (as if that were insightful), and that he was right. I realize you want to let the debate roll, and one way to do it is to add a few provocative semi-retard remarks and see what comes back. Reminds me of the Great Cork Debate, and others.

Speaking of Great Big Hoaxes, I'll add that the average fear level about Asbestos is real high in this web site, and if that represents average America then hooo boy have you guys got problems - I mean you'll spend money on anything just 'cuz someone made you believe it was a problem. In Quebec where a huge amount of the world's asbestos is mined and has been for a hundred years, nobody is afraid of asbestos since they all 'know' that it is only continued exposure that will hurt, like what the miners got when they spent thousands of hours working for a living. How's that for a provocative idea?

So with all respect for you all who contribute here, I am laying out these notions above for you to consider.

[oogabooga]

Why not the same hysteria about Legionaires Disease from bagged compost and potting mix??. That will stand a pretty good chance of killing you too. I bet there's squillions who handle the stuff without protective equipment.

I never quite understand how some things get blown all out of proportion and yet others don't, the inconsistency of it all

Rob.