Posted: 8/10/2014 3:48:55 PM EDT
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I was out to my BOL this weekend and was in the basement assessing my preps and added to them when I noticed the smell of mold as soon as walked down the stairs. I have an older wooden kitchen cabinet and counter top set up and the wood on the cabinet has a light coating of mold.
It is pretty dry down there but it very cool. There are basement windows but I can't leave them open when I am not there. I am not sure if a dehumidifier would work if I can empty the tank regularly. Any Ideas? |
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Most dehumidifiers can be set up to drain through a garden hose. Even if yours won't, you can buy some epoxy and put a hole in the drain bucket and rig it up to drain to something larger. I don't know if you have a way to constantly drain the garden hose. If you start modifying the sucker the auto shutoff might not work. Depends on how you rig things up. While you might not be able to leave the windows open I would see about adding in a couple vents to get some airflow down there. Once you control the airflow and mold kill it with bleach or whatever they use for mold these days. Mold is a huge problem so there is tons of info out there on it. |
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The lower level of my house is below ground.
I run a dehumidifyer 24/7 and have Kilz under coating on all the walls. Our biggest problem came from a busted hot water tank we didn't catch until way too late. We cleaned all the surfaces with bleach, had to remove some dry wall after a check to see how deep, then covered everything with Kilz, and not had a problem since. Tj |
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If it is raw wood ( unpainted or unstained) you can treat it with a product called:
Bora-care with Moldcare. We use it a lot for wood destroying insects but does a great job of inhibiting mold and wood destroying fungus. About $80 a gallon and mixes up to 3 gallons depending on the application rate. It is some awesome stuff and has no odor to speak of and completely safe around kids, pets, adults. Plus it lasts virtually the life of the wood as long as it doesn't get soaking wet regularly. The added bonus is you won't ever get termites or wood boring beetles in the wood...... Ever. |