LESLIE: The winter brings many things but for Jim in West Virginia it’s bringing mold on a ceiling.
Jim, tell us about it.
JIM: I have mold growing and there’s nothing in this bedroom except a bed.
TOM: Well it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to live in the bed to get mold. Mold is a condition of moisture in the house condensing on the ceiling surface or the wallboard surfaces; enjoying the wonderful meal of paper that is coating that drywall – because that’s what it likes; mold likes to eat the cellulose, the organic material – and once it gets started, it really takes hold. What you really need to do is to do a good job cleaning that.
LESLIE: Yeah, and what you want to do is when you clean it you want to make sure you’re using a 10-percent bleach solution. So do 10 percent bleach to 90 percent water.
And then, Tom, you want to spray that on?
TOM: Spray it and let it sit.
LESLIE: The longer you let it sit, the more the bleach really works and kills that bacteria.
TOM: Exactly.
JIM: Well I have done that and it lasts about a year. I mean it comes back every winter and it just amazes me that I’ve got 40 percent humidity in the house, so I maintain that.
TOM: Right.
JIM: I just can’t figure out why it’s getting in there.
TOM: Well after you clean it and remove it, do you reprime and paint that ceiling or do you leave …?
JIM: No. No.
TOM: No? You know, I bet you if you reprimed and painted it with a mildicide in the paint, that you probably wouldn’t see that happen again.
JIM: OK. Thank you.
TOM: Jim, thanks so much for stopping by The Money Pit.
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