133: Mold Prevention In Bathrooms

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

All right, let's talk mold prevention in bathrooms. Bathrooms are a big deal because there's a whole lot of water in there. There's a whole lot of water sources in there, and bathrooms are a lot of times an issue that's going on in space. So what I want to talk about today is things that we could do to kind of prevent these issues before they start. And also I'll talk about some things you can look for to see if it's already happened. Bathrooms have a few things that are different. They have showers, tubs, toilets. But at its core, every room, including bathrooms, and every room in your house is structurally built. The same walls, floors, ceilings. Okay? So there are some of the basic things you look for in every single space, and then there are some of these unique things that go on in bathrooms. Right? Let's talk about your tub shower areas. Some of the common things that happen there. Some of the of the things that we can try to address and fix and think of now in a shower. Think about it. You turn the shower on, you are just pouring gallons and gallons of water down into the bottom of the shower over and over and over again. Okay? So one thing that happens a lot in showers is the interior of a shower actually gets moisture that gets behind the tile and creates a mold problem behind the tile that you can't see. And sometimes you'll see it manifest as darkness in. In the grout of the tile or the tile's cracking or whatever's going on, and you're like, ah, that's not a big deal. I'll wipe off the surface of it or whatever you're going to do. The problem is, if the moisture is behind the tile, you end up getting mold back there. And a lot of times when the showers are actually, like, remediated and they demolish them and take them down, there's mold all over the place behind the showers. They ended up being this huge source of a problem that we didn't even realize then. The question is, like, well, Brian, you just said, like, water's pouring down these things all the time. How can we prevent something like that? And there's a couple things you could do. One, just look at the actual integrity of the shower and keep an eye on it. Right now, the biggest thing on this is the grout. Tile does not let water get through tile typically, right? So you're like, oh, I have tile all over my shower. It's great. Yeah, but tile is connected by these little grout lines in between. The thing about water, guys, is that water deteriorates stuff. So grout is not meant to last forever, and it will start to break down over time. We have to be so on top of it and continuously be checking, are there cracks, are there gaps? Are the little holes that are getting created in the grout, and we need to be re grouting and maintaining our showers and stuff. What is shower maintenance mean to you? Right. For most people, it means nothing. Actually. For some people, it might mean squeegeeing down the shower walls or something after a shower. Most people don't do that. And even a smaller portion of people are even looking at their grout lines to see over time. Oh, man, am I starting to see, like, little holes that are starting to kind of come up? Those are the initial signs that moisture can start penetrating through and getting back into those spaces. Once that happens, you're screwed at that point. Like, there's no fixing it. Once the water gets behind the shower, you can't get it out. It's there, all right? And then the only thing that you can do at that point is rip the whole thing out, because how else are you going to clean it? You can't even remediate it from the backside a lot of times, because the construction of a shower, you have your tile, and then right behind your tile, you have, like, a waterproofing board, which is to keep water from going through that and then into the back side of the wall cavity and through into, like, another room, for example. Most times, that waterproofing board is actually doing its job. It's keeping the water from going into the adjacent room. And so you don't as often see water damage going into, like, the room on the other side. Not that it doesn't happen, but it's not as often. But just because the waterproofing board is stopping the water. Waterproofing board is not mold proof. All right? So if water gets in there and it just is trapped there and it stays there, you end up getting mold growing all around the shower. And then what are we doing every day? Every two days? However often you take a shower, you're in the shower, right? And what are you doing? You're pumping water in the shower. What's the water doing? It's seeing, seeping in through these cracks and these gaps that we've talked about. Then what's that doing is feeding the mold. And then what's the mold doing? It's active, it's growing. It's more actively releasing spores. If there are mycotoxin producers back there that are doing it, it's probably more actively producing mycotoxins because you keep feeding it with the water that it needs to keep going and going and going. All right, so the shower is such an important part of what's going on in our bathroom. And so many people just kind of like, don't think, think about it because it's like this out of sight, out of mind thing. It's like, oh, I'll clean the tile, I'll clean the grout with some cleaning solution. And we think that the only issue that happens in a shower is that, oh, yeah, there's grout and stuff that gets dirty. So I just have my cleaners come in and clean it. It looks really nice afterwards at the end, like, that's cool. But if that's happening on the surface, it's most likely getting behind and happening behind. And there's a larger problem there. So when we go into a space and we're looking at, at showers and bathrooms, it's a couple things we do. One, we do moisture readings all along the tile throughout the shower. We can see if there's trap moisture back there when you're doing that. If there's trap moisture back there, it's like a huge issue, right? Like, now we know, now we know we got trapped moisture back there. We know that moisture and building material equals mold. And if it's trapped back there, it's not going to dry out anytime soon because you keep showering. So it's just going to keep going and going and going. It's a really big problem if it is dry at the time. But we're seeing issues in the grout. We'll sample the grout, we'll see if there's issues in the grout, how significant it is, maybe just regrout, but it's something you have to think of. So on the prevention front, like I mentioned, keep an eye on the integrity of all of the sealants and the grouts. Even, like where your doors are sealed, like all that stuff, you have to look at all of that. Don't think that it just is meant to last forever. Nothing in a house is meant to last forever. Literally nothing is meant to last forever. Some could last a really long time, but there's maintenance that has to come with that stuff. Stuff, Right. We have to be on top of that stuff. All right. Another area where there are issues in showers is the shower pan. The shower pan is like the floor of your shower. Okay? So what happens if water gets into it? The pan kind of collects it, and it funnels it into the drain and it drains it out. Right. But there are times where there are shower pan leaks, and what that means is that water gets out from under the shower and comes under the floor. Problem with this is that in bathrooms, most of our bathrooms are tile. So if you get water coming under the floor, you actually don't really see it, because tile doesn't buckle and bow and swell the same way that a wood floor does. So what are some things that we can look at to try to think, could this possibly be happening here? One, if you have a moisture meter, run your moisture meter along the floor, like where the shower meets the floor, right? If you're picking up elevations, then bam, you know, the water's getting under there problem, right? Let's say you don't have moisture meter. By the way, guys, you could get one. They're like 50 bucks on Amazon. They're not, like, super expensive. We all should probably have one of these in our house, to be honest with you. So if not, go look for one. Don't get the ones with the pins. Get the ones that have a pad instead. There's more applications you could do for that. Like, you can't stick pins into tile, right? But you could put a pad on tile, and the pad basically has, like, electric frequencies that reads for moisture or whatever underneath there. Those are the really the ones that we use. The kind of flat pad ones will go over drywall, do all the stuff. And the benefit of it is that you're not putting holes everywhere, and you can really map a lot of different areas. You literally can move it all along a wall, all over the floors, all over the place. You can track everything with no damage to the house, and it can show you what's going on. They're, like, super beneficial things to use, especially in bathrooms, because there's so many water sources in bathrooms. The big piece about bathrooms, you just want to make sure that, like, all of these plumbing lines and water issues and all this stuff aren't spreading outside of where they're supposed to be and causing problems. Let's talk about something else. So like I said, tile's not going to bow and warp the way that wood is. But a lot of times there is wood under the tile. Okay. So if moisture gets under the tile and there's wood under there, that wood might warp or bow a little bit. And if you bend something under a solid tile surface and the tile can't bend, it's going to start applying pressure to the tile and eventually you'll start getting cracks in your tile. So if you're going through your bathroom and you see cracks in your tile, it's a concern. There's no reason for that stuff to crack, except for either you drop something on it, which if that's the case, you know that, right? So, like, you didn't do that. So the only reason something's really going to crack in terms of tile is if there's some sort of pressure being applied to the tile and it causes a crack because tile is a malleable and can't really be bend very well. Does it always mean water? No. Your house could be settling. That could cause a crack in your tile. Right. So it's not always like a water issue, but if you're looking around, you're like, oh, this is kind of like near the tub, or this is kind of near the toilet, or this is kind of near the sink. And you see some of that going on. Big red flag. Why is this happening? There could be a leak that's going on in here and then bam. You got to get a plumber in there and try to figure out if that's going on. Right. Moisture meter could be good to see if it's happening right now. But it could also be dry. Right. It could have happened with the person that lived in your house before you you bought the house. Like, whatever, there was a crack, you're like, ah, whatever's crack. We're going to redo this bathro, but it's in our five year plan to redo this bathroom. So I'm not going to worry about it now. But if that tile cracked and it dried out, let's say that there was a leak from the toilet. And let's say the previous owner replaced the toilet, put a new toilet, and it's no longer leaking. That doesn't mean that the water damage and the possible mold that grew on the subfloor underneath your tile is like gone now. Like, it would still be there. Right. And that's a really good clue and sign that you can use in a bathroom or anywhere that has tile flooring. If you're seeing random cracks in your Tile flooring. It only happens because there's pressure against the tile. And the two main reasons that happens is, one, your house is settling, or two, moisture got under there, is causing stuff to warp and bend, and bam, it starts cracking. All right, now let's talk about how we prevent some of this stuff. One, I talked about keeping your eyes on grout and stuff. Two, squeezing down the walls in your shower and then from the walls down to the middle of your drain. So a lot of people who squeegee the walls, most people just leave it at the bottom of the shower. Well, think about it. The bottom of the shower is a grout line, and it's a connection of two different. Different surfaces. Right? Wall meets floor. Okay? If you're putting all the water from the wall and bringing it right down to the corner where the wall meets the floor and leaving it there, that's where grout is. It's going to deteriorate that a lot faster. It'll start getting back behind the wall a lot easier. Right? You'd be surprised if you squeegee down a wall how much water actually comes down a shower wall. It's pretty freaking crazy. So you don't want to just leave it at the corner, because now you're speeding up the deterioration process of the grout and everything that's right down there by the wall. So then the next thing you want to do is take from the corners of the floor where they meet the wall and then squeegee all of that towards your drain in the middle. Okay? You want to get all the water out of the shower as best as you can. When you do that, just do that one time. Just like, you'd be like, ugh, I don't want to do it. Just go do it one time. Do it for me. Or listen to the show. It's cool. And just see how much water is actually there. Once you realize how much water you literally moved off of walls that just look like water drip stains and how much of it there is, you'll be like, oh, my God, I need to be doing this all the time. Right? Like, that's what's going to happen. Bonus points a second. Somebody wants bonus points on the interior of the shower. After you squeegee everything, there is still some water left over. Have a towel next to the shower that's meant to wipe down the floors in the shower. Wipe it all down floors again. Gravity brings everything down. Right. You could wipe the walls, too. Right. You could wipe everything but the. The floor in your Shower especially, there's tile floor down there. Even when you squeegee, water gets into the grout lines of the tile, right. And it's going to stay there. And so you're bringing a lot more water over the, the grout lines in the floor of the tile. It could start eating away at it, just like I talked about before. So if you dry the floor of the shower after that, you're soaking up that moisture and you're removing the ability for kind of like this long term deterioration that's happening. Okay, so those are some things for the shower. Let's say you have a tub. You have to be super, super careful that water isn't getting out of your shower or tub and getting onto the wall right next to the shower. It happens all the time. All right. When you're talking about prevention and something like that, like frankly, it's just being aware of like if water's getting out of your tub and making sure that it doesn't get out of your tub first. And then if for some reason it does, that you're drying it up right away so it doesn't have time to soak in and create a long term problem for me, I got a four year old and a one and a half year old. They take baths. Kids like to splash. But you know what? My kids don't splash. You want to know why? Because I tell them if you splash, your bath is done. The end no splashing water in this bathroom is a no splash zone. If I see one drop of water come out of this tub, bath time over. Toys going away. We're turning off, we're getting out of here, right? I've kind of turned into like the not fun bath guy. But you know what, they have plenty of fun in there anyway. They don't need to splash around like crazy people to have a good time. That's what the swimming pool is for. The tub is not for that. I joke around that I'm like the no fun bath guy. But like my kids have a great time in the bath. We have little toys in there for them, like they have a good time together. And that's awesome, right? But what happens at the end is I don't have water splashing out all over the walls that are next to my tub, which means I don't have mold problems on the wall. Because there are so many houses I walk into and I see this happen all the time, right? I walk into a bathroom, one of the first places I look is I put my flashlight down vertical, looking straight down at a baseboard. And if I see bubbling on the baseboard, I already know. I know that there's probably going to be a problem back there. So that's something you do on the prevention front. And if water gets out, just dry it up. Right. They're not pouring out gallons. Right. Like a little water gets out, that's fine. Dry it up. Water needs 24 hours for mold to start growing. Right. And as long as it's not soaking and soaking into building materials, it's just on the surface, you could dry it really quickly, prevent that stuff from happening. All right, so that's another prevention tip kind of shower. Now we're working our way out from the shower. If you're imagining this blueprint of your bathroom, okay, so the next thing that we're going to have is our toilet. All right, so let's talk about toilets. What are the main issues with toilets? Typically, it's what's called the wax ring that is at the bottom of your toilet. So your toilet goes into your floor. There's what's called a wax ring that's around the bottom of your toilet. And that ring is to keep water from getting out of the toilet area and under the floor. A lot of times, what will happen is that that wax ring starts to deteriorate. Hey, are we hearing a consistent theme here? The wax ring is not meant to. So it breaks down, it deteriorates. It starts to leak. Bam. Water starts getting out under the tile. Okay. Same thing with tile that I talk about with the shower. Having a moisture meter is awesome. Every single house we go into, we moisture meter around the entire toilet. We moisture meter the floor in front of showers and tubs. There's a reason that we're doing this. You could be doing this, too. Most toilets have walls that are kind of close to them. Some of them are in their own little room. There's three walls around them. Some of them just have one wall right behind them. Whatever it is, I've never really seen a toilet just flat in the middle of a room. So there's typically at least one wall within, like, six inches of a toilet. If you have a water leak that is coming out from the wax ring that we talked about, you might not see it under the tile. But you know where you could possibly see it is the baseboard that's six inches away from the tile. Because water spreads out horizontally, when it hits a wall, it'll start to wick upwards. It'll start to soak up the wall. It's called capillary. Action. So what that means is that if water hits a dry space, it. It keeps looking for dry, basically. So if it hits the wall and it's dry, well, now the bottom of the wall is dry. So now it goes a little higher because estri goes a little higher because that's dry. Starts soaking upward. Right. So if there's moisture that's coming out from a toilet, it happens to be going toward the wall. And if you see bubbling in the baseboard behind the wall, massive, massive, huge red flag that there is an issue with the toilet. Could be from the bottom of it. Could be from plumbing lines in the back, depending on where the plumbing is running. But that's a pretty big sign that there's something going on. So that's kind of what you're looking for around toilets. Now. What's the preventative action around that? Honestly, there's not a lot of prevention you could do about that, other than having a more regular maintenance schedule with having a plumber come out and evaluate everything. Okay, have a plumber come out every six months. Just check everything in the house. Why would we not, like, preventatively bring people out? You take your car to get preventative maintenance. Why wouldn't you do preventative maintenance on your house? Right. It's not weird after, like, 25,000 miles or 50,000 miles to take your car in and have them, like, chain the oil and check the filters. Like that's a normal thing you do. Why wouldn't you have the same thought process for your house? Right. So that's kind of the thing you could do on the toilet front. So let's talk last area in a bathroom. This is your sink. There's sinks all over the house, kitchens everywhere. Right. So it's kind of the same stuff. Most of the issues that happen with sinks happen under the sink. Usually there's a drip happening under the sink. There's two places the drips typically come from. One is the actual sink or plumbing line itself. We're stripping straight down onto the cabinet. Two, it's the backsplash behind a sink where maybe the grout has deteriorated or damaged and water starts coming down the back of the wall. So when you look under a sink, you're usually seeing it in two places. You're seeing bubbling or something like that on the floor of your sink cabinet, or you're seeing water streaking coming down the back wall, or sometimes you're seeing both. That's kind of what you're seeing as far as a preventative thing under the sinks every Single sink in my house has this rubber mat that's down there that could basically hold a gallon of water. So. So if there was a leak and it went in there, this rubber mat could hold a gallon of water of that and not allow it to actually touch any of my cabinets. That is huge. Most cabinet, sink, or sink cabinets leak. If you put this down there, it gives you the ability to address it and fix it before it screws up your cabinet and causes a mold problem. Every single sink cabinet in your house should have one of these. Just flat out, they should have one of them. So from a prevention standpoint, that's one. The second thing, don't store a bunch of crap under there. The more stuff you have under there, the less you can see. Okay? So a lot of times you open a cabinet, like, I see all my crap looks good. How do you know it looks good? You can't see under all your stuff. What if it drift, like, behind this thing over here and you can't see? Right. So the other preventative thing, every month, at minimum, if not more often, just unpack all of your. Everything that's under your sinks. Look under there, make sure there's no drips, make sure there's no stains. Make sure there's nothing weird that's going on. Because it happens all the time. Because it happens all the time. We have to be more aware of it. I don't want you to normalize it and say, oh, it happens all the time. I'm not going to worry about it. I want you to think about it, be more aware of it, make it more of a thing for you to be thinking about and make sure it doesn't happen. Because it happens all the time, right? So that's what you could do for prevention. The other thing is don't store as much crap under there. Product bottles and all that stuff are water sources. The primary ingredient in all of that stuff is water. And then they put little additives into things. Okay? So they are water sources, too. The less of those things you have in there, the better. Now if you're putting them on this, like, rubber protective mat, that's nice, you know, Then if there is an issue, it's not going to be as big of a problem. But the less stuff you put down there, the less clutter there is down there, the better that you know, and then the better you can see down there without having to pull everything out, then that's a better situation. So these are kind of the basics on bathrooms, so hopefully you guys found this one helpful. And I'll keep doing some of these for each different rooms over the next few episodes and few weeks. And then we'll end up having a collection of everything that you need to think about for prevention in every room of your house. And it's going to be very exciting. And I'll probably package it in some little downloads. You can get all of it in one episode or something, and it'll be very easy. So in the meantime, here you go. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time.

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