Matt Kelly (the "Mold Man") answers a viewer question about bathroom mold remediation. Key practical advice: immediately seal off a contaminated bathroom (use 6 mil plastic taped over the doorway; optionally crack a window in dry climates), because spores/mycotoxins can spread. He explains common bathroom causes (leaks under sinks, porous grout and tile, leaking toilet seals, shower benches) and recommends acrylic shower surrounds over tile when possible. For professional remediation, he advises hiring teams certified to IICRC S520, with experience in proper removal (remove damaged materials, use air scrubbers, create negative air pressure, double-bag and seal waste) rather than superficial cleaning. He also references his course (moldproofyourhome.com) and offers consultations.
Questions this video answers
6 mil plastic.
August 13, 2023.
IICRC S520 certification.
moldproofyourhome.com.
Remove all damaged material; use air scrubbers; establish negative air pressure; seal and tape waste bags.
Chapters
All right, Whitney's question is mold remediation in bathrooms. Could you ask me a bigger question, Whitney? That's a massive how to remediate a bathroom. But let me in a couple minutes cover a few of the big things. Number one, if you know there's a mold problem in the bathroom and you have another bathroom, I would seal off the one with the problem and just for now until you get someone in that's actually going to remediate it and fix that problem. Because if you have a room with a known problem, it's better to seal it off rather than have all the spores and fragments and mycotoxins coming out feeding into the rest of the house and contaminating the rest of the house worse. So the way to seal that off is to go to your local Home Depot or Lowe's and buy 6 mil plastic. That's the weight that you want. And you're going to tape it and seal it off from seal that doorway off top to bottom. Make sure it's taped on all spots and that prevents that those toxins from coming out into the rest of the house. Bonus points if you're in a dry climate where it doesn't rain a lot, you can crack the window in there and have allow fresh air in and toxic air out. But bathrooms are obviously one of the worst homes in a house for problems. Right. You've got leaks under the sink and you've got showers that are leaking due to cracked grout or just a porous grout letting enough water through so you'll end up having. You can have mold, especially in benches. Benches are notorious for mold in showers. Tiled showers are awful. If you have the option, folks always go with acrylic. It's not as pretty, but it's far more mold proof. But people get mold growing under their tile just because it's porous. Right? The grouts porous. It goes through there a lot of times under toilets. You know, your seal on the toilet leaks slowly and all of a sudden the floor there starts getting spongy. It's just bathrooms are notorious for mold problems and if you haven't seen my mold proof your home course I cover bathrooms in detail. What you can do, it's moldproof your home.com and I cover and show you in a bathroom things you can do to prevent problems because they are notorious and but there's a lot you can do. Okay to make sure you don't have new problems there. But for mold remediation and bathrooms, remember when you get a good remediation team, make sure they're IICRCS 520 certified at minimum, and they know, have a lot of experience and understand how people get sick from this. Because the companies that do a good job know what it does to people's bodies. The companies that don't care just come in and scrape and wash off some mold or replace one or two things, leave didn't do a tenth of the proper job and it just becomes a bigger problem. Okay. And the worst ones will actually cross contaminate the rest of your house, which is a massive problem. So make sure you get someone that is IICRCS520 certified at minimum and understands what they're doing and check references if you can, because they need to understand how this toxic mold affects people's bodies. And if they understand that, they're a lot more apt to be able to do a good job and care about their work. But if you can seal it off for the time being other than that, it's a whole lot of process of proper remediation, which means not just cleaning something up or spraying something, it's literally removing all the damaged material and removing it properly. Having an air scrubber, negative air pressure, sealing up those bags, taping them up. There's a lot to it. That's why it matters who you get. And unfortunately we don't have a good repository to draw from of companies that, that are awesome. And that's the biggest problem when it comes to mold. It's not just the problem of trying to find someone that understands the body, because medical doctors don't. I know, I'm way over my tongue. Medical doctors don't just understand anything about the body or how to check for mycotoxins or mold colonization, understand detox or anything about healing here. But then you get the problem with the house where you don't have inspectors that know what they're doing or remediation companies that know what they're doing and end up making problems worse. I know it's a horrible situation. Hopefully we keep getting more companies. I have a short list, but hopefully that list will keep growing of companies we can count on to come in and really help us.
Do you have questions about mold in your home or body? Book a consultation with Matt, AKA the Mold man to guide your home and body to the next level of healing.
