Was told leak in basement and around a chimney caused mold to go throughout a house where roof is fine except around chimney.

One contractor went through said it needed gutted mold possibly growing behind walls.

Pls advise if anyone has dealt with.

Avoid eating cheese, it is a gmo mold, pizza shops use it frequently. An ozone generator would be helpful for this, visit ebay...

Avoid eating cheese, it is a gmo mold, pizza shops use it frequently. An ozone generator would be helpful for this, visit ebay...

Jen,

Don’t let the hysteria get into your wallet n

Stop the leak, dry it out. Run a dehumidifier.

Fast moving air is the most effective. It will dry out drywall so it is drier than new.

Clean with bleach mixed with SpicNSpan and water. (Katrina hurricane mix)

Follow up with Concrobium or JoMax mildewcide from Home Depot or such to kill the mold. Allow to air dry. Repeat.

Prime with ZinsserBIN, paint.

Indiana State Dept of Health says “Mold is everywhere. Most types are not hazardous to healthy individuals. Many are black in appearance but are not stachybotros.” (the bad stuff)

Best of luck!

The larger places take more time, for a house with many rooms running the fan to circulate the treated air is helpful, the generator can not send it everywhere. Use a Ford long enough to reach the outlet closest to the door so you can turn it off and let the house air out a little before going in deep, people with respiratory ailments wait till the sweet smell has gone.

IF you had in your hand information about the issue you believed....... and you had in your hand a proposed solution that you believed would fix the issue....... then you wouldn't need this forum where we are House Doctors living far away with no visual information for our diagnosis

People often get a second opinion from a DR - why not get another reading from another house Dr.

then seek 3 or more quotes for the work until you are satisfied that they all agree with the solution

I use a well-fitting N-95 respirator when cleaning mold. No sense poking my allergies needlessly.

As others all said, find all sources of moisture first, deal with that before anything else. No point in doing ANYTHING else until source is cured. Then run dehumidifier to dry things up. I leave a dehumidifier in my houses for my tenants as well, and I check to make sure tenants use it. My state is a moldy, allergy-ridden place!

If you are concerned there is mold behind the walls, maybe open a section up, assuming the house is currently vacant. (I wouldn’t open a wall to check for mold with a tenant in place, by the way. ) Then you’ll know for sure, and can either replace drywall, or, if no mold, patch it back up.

When washing up any potentially moldy walls, floors, joists (yes, I have scrubbed every square inch of the floor joists above the basement space in several houses! ) anyway, I make sure there are No Dip-backs in the soapy water bucket. To me, that just spreads mold spores. What I do is : have a gazillion clean rags, dunk them in my bucket of cleaning solution, pull them out, lightly squeezed out, into another bucket. I get all the rags out of the clean soapy water while my hands are still clean. Use each rag once, toss into a discard discard bucket. If I need more rags, rinse my hands, add a fresh batch of clean rags to the clean soapy water. So I never end up using murky water to try to clean. I bring the discard bucket home, wash the rags three wash cycles in my washer at home, dry on hottest cycle. Or, if you have enough rags, the rags can just be discarded.