Follow on from my thread the other week. After Marin kindly came round and identified I probably did have a problem in the two rooms I was worried about, today I set about having a look in the downstairs cloak room aka the old outside loo.

Would have done this yesterday but son#1 determined not to be outdone by son#2 with pneumonia had an allergic reaction to something and was bluelighted from nursery to A&E. My life is like eastenders at the moment…

Anyway, took off the skirting and up some of the laminate – this has been down for approx 4 years. There is some horrible looking white feathery stuff under there, some form of fungus. Any ideas? And what next? Think the pipe on the right has a leak into the wall – I was planning on chiselling some of the plaster off to see – as it sounds blown.

Pictures:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/44108154@N06/36517974000/in/dateposted/

The joys of an older home !

edit still cannot get the image button on here to work///

is it not some kind of adhesive ?

Looks like dry rot has it got a musty smell

yep musty smell, just removed a bit more laminate and the green fibre board – its under that too.

small hole in the wall, about an inch which is crumbly wet sand.

This is starting to worry me about how much its going to cost to sort 🙁

Christ, what a thing. Sorry, can’t help, but you have my sympathies.

main thing is to remove all the contaminated floor materials and then look at the source of moisture ingress. As with most things, it will take time for growth and as long as the source is taken care of, you wont get regrowth on new floors once they’re down.

as per the email i sent you, removing mold contaminated stuff is straight forward and can be done safely with a few precautions in place.

The main issue is to get the underlying causes sorted

I’m no expert, but if this is an old house could that not just have been caused by condensation on the outside of the toilet running down onto the wood?

When we bought our house in 1990 apart from all the woodworm in the kitchen and the central heating boiler that didnt work the surveyor also didnt pick up on the damp that ran through the downstairs toilet, utility room and the hall. When the carpets, skirting boards, and plaster were removed we had a lot more of the fungus than your photos show. We also had a concrete floor that had been put in at a later date than when the house was built When we finally traced to where it was comming from we had an original toilet that had been replumbed in at some time into a plastic joint that looks like you have in the photo. It hadnt sealed right and as such every time the toilet had been flushed some of the waste water ran out of it.
We had a new damp proof course done before it was descovered as the new plaster was still getting wet.

Might be worth looking for a leak.

we’ve just had a new kitchen fitted and had similar fungus under the floorboards on a concrete floor from a persistent water leak in a stud wall.

Thanks guys – tazzy I didn’t see any email – what was the title?

I’ve black bagged the fibre board wearing a respirator, googles and plastic gloves. Appears to be some old lino underneath which also needs to come out although appears to be resisting my attempts. Once up there was visible moist areas. The toilet hasn’t been used for around 3 weeks now.

Got a bit happy with the drill and removed the plaster around the pipe to see if that was a cause, nothing obvious but the brick work on the back wall is damp up until about 40cm both sides of the toliet that and the obvious damp spread from the toilet makes me think it is the same issue you had Tracey

It has no ventilation and a high humidity – has been upto 84% normally sits around 65% about 10% higher than the rest of the house.

Reminds me I dug up my toilet floor and the modern plastic waste pipe was connected to the old pipe via an old putty pot with the bottom cut out:

Google Photo link

Bit more clearing….couple more photos, fungus is also under the old lino around the toilet / soil pipe. Nothing obvious from the old lead water pipe which I thought was at fault

Great that *you* are wearing a respirator to do this but are you addressing this in a remediation fashion? Unless you are airtight with negative air pressure, you are simply spreading the spores throughout the house.
If you think this is what’s making the family sick, you could be making it worse in the short term.
I’m guilty of doing the same in my home, just didn’t know any better and it bothers me everytime I think about my mistake.

I would get it all out and let it dry. Once its dry flush the toilet and watch for any leaks. We didnt get much leaking from ours per flush but over a day we flushed it about 15 times and were shocked at how far it spread. If its not got any leaks from anywhere like pipes or cystern then start looking at other options.

Sorry to hear that op. Sounds horrendous! Just to add my experience into the mix, I had pneumonia earlier this year and have been struggling ever since with respiratory issues. I work away 2-3 days a week and would always feel fine, then come home and within 2 days have streaming eyes/snot etc.

Eventually realised it seemed to be coming from the “playroom” – old sofa, grotty carpet lots of kids toys and dust.

Chucked the sofa away last weekend and what a difference! Still v sensitive to dust but no massive issues. Kind of wonder whether the kids have been ill because of it too. Carpet next, no damp under it but gonna take the opportunity to sort out the decor!

Great that *you* are wearing a respirator to do this but are you addressing this in a remediation fashion? Unless you are airtight with negative air pressure, you are simply spreading the spores throughout the house.

very much depends on the species, if its spore forming etc.. from looking at that its very much spread through hyphae

cdc have some good info
mold info from CDC without overly paniky stuff and simple fixes

Thanks all. it’s already looking drier in there. have ordered a dehumidifier to help out. old carpets are next on the hit list.

Do damp bricks dry out okay? the lower 5 courses are really crumbly. It’s odd as the plaster i removed was dry to touch.