Mold smell/humidity issue throughout the house

last year

Hi! We bought our house 6 months ago and it had a significant musty/mildew smell. After months of trying to remediate it, I am beyond frustrated, concerned, and at a loss of how to fix it.

We had an active leak in the roof, and after doing a full tear off, we tore out two walls, removed all insulation, properly dried them, then dry walled. This removed a majority of the problem, but a smell has continued to linger.

We’ve had mold specialists come and have been reluctant to help since the smell is not terribly significant and they can’t see mold. This is fair, but I’ve had a skin rash since moving in, and the smell gets in our clothes, so we feel that it is necessary to do something.

Tomorrow we plan to demo our bathroom, as there was a horrible smell coming from the access panel to the plumbing in the shower, and the sub flooring is falling apart (we took out the ceiling below). There were days we could hardly be near the bathroom, as it smelled of a rancid urine/ mold/ unidentifiable odor.

We got a new dehumidifier for our basement 4 months ago that has kept the humidity in the basement to 50%, running constantly. However, the humidity on the first and second floor has stayed in the 60-70% range throughout our humid summer.

Last week an HVAC person suggested an air purifier to run constantly and a dehumifier upstairs to ”get over the humidity hump”. We loved this idea, as we had been quoted thousands to install an air ionizer, and this seems like a much easier fix. We’ve also kept the door to the baement open for the week to let the basement dehumidifier work on the upper floors. This has gotten the humidity down to a pretty consistent 47-50%

So our questions are as follows:

-Would you recommend a fairly large, basement dehumidifier (1500 sq ft) to ”get over the hump”, or two smaller ones for rooms to run constantly?

-Or, would you say that opening the basement door for the week was enough?

-Has anyone else experienced a smell like what I am describing from the bathroom?

-Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do next?

Thank you for any help you can give, we are desperate for a solution!!

Featured Answer

Seabornman

last year

Try an ozone generator Enerzen Ozone Generator 40,000mg Industrial O3 Air Purifier Deodorizer (40,000mg - Black) https://a.co/d/cxibqb1 It worked for us. Follow the instructions.

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Comments (6)

dan1888
last year
Sounds like you need the capacity of a whole house dehumidifier ducted into your hvac system ducts. Aprilaire is one source.
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Charles Ross Homes
last year
HI, Anna,

I'm sorry for your experience. You may have developed a hyper-sensitivity to mold based on the duration of your exposure. If so, it will be more difficult (and expensive) to modify the indoor environment to suit your needs.

The difficulty with mold remediation is that it often requires a multi-disciplinary approach, Yet, the mold remediation contractor wants to remove wet, mold materials and dry out the wet portions of the home and call it good. The duct cleaning contractor will convince you the problem is in your duct work, check, please! The crawl space expert wants to sell you a dehumidifier without understanding the ventilation needs in the crawl or basement. The HVAC contractor wants to sell you a magic filter to add to your system. The building science guy wants to eliminate negative pressure in the home. To achieve the results you need, you may need to do all of the above and more.

I can't diagnose your problem from afar, but I'll share a couple of points which I hope will be helpful. First, molds generally need a relative humidity of 60% or more to get established. However, once established, they can propagate at relative humidity levels as low as 50% So the goal of any system is to control relative humidity at or below 50% Control point sources of moisture in your home (e.g., install a range vent hood, effective, high-quality bath vent fans, etc.) Mold spores are naturally occurring in the environment so they are being introduced into your home if the home is at negative pressure relative to outdoors (and most are.) You'll need a filtration system--either integrated with your existing HVAC system or one or more stand-alone units. You may also need odor-eliminating filters like activated carbon filters. I would try stand-alone units placed wherever you spend most of your time in the home (e.g., bedrooms) before investing in system modifications. If system modifications are proposed, they should be designed so they do not make the negative pressure condition worse after implementation.
klem1
last year
Funny thing about odors is they are difficult to deal with when one is able to smell them, they aren't only difficult to deal with long distance, they are impossible.
PRO
Charles Ross Homes
last year
Odors are not always impossible to deal with. If the source of the odor can be determined and the offending source material (e.g., wet, moldy construction materials or the kitchen garbage) can be removed, that may be sufficient. If not, some combination of ventilation and/or filtration to reduce the offending odor below the detectable limit may do the trick. Masking the odor is another technique, if you don't mind perfumes. A sequential approach--starting with the least sophisticated and least-costly options is a good way to determine what, if anything works before investing in more expensive alternatives.
Sigrid
last year
Most room fresheners have a compound that removes odors. You can probably get some without the cheap perfumes found in products like Glade. So, once you've removed the source of the odors, there's hope for getting rid of them.