Matt Kelly explains that musty smell comes from microbial VOCs produced by active mold. The odor signals a moisture problem feeding the colony. Find the strongest smell, check under floors and behind showers with moisture meters or thermal imaging, and reinspect after remediation if the odor lingers.
What do you do when you have a musty smell in your house? Lots of people contact me and say, matt, we did remediation, but we still have a musty smell. Or maybe they didn't do remediation like Matt, I'm wondering if we have a problem in our house. Our bathroom or this closet in the bedroom has a musty smell. Or the basement, the obvious place. Right. For musty smells. So what do you do when you have a musty smell? So a musty smell, that's a microbial voc that's coming from a mold colony. When a mold colony is thriving, it's happy, it's healthy, it has the energy to put out these microbial VOCs, and that's what we're smelling. When we say, oh, that's just mildew, that's just must. It's the byproduct of fungus growing. Now, does it have to be a toxigenic mold? Doesn't have to be. Could it be a more benign mold? It could be, but the question is, why is it being. Why is that mold so healthy? Why is that fungus so healthy that it's able to put out these microbial VOCs that you're smelling? So there is a moisture issue. So what do you do? You find that moisture issue, you put your sniffer on and you just keep sniffing till you kind of find where it's the strongest. And then you got to determine it. You know, is it coming from under a floor, behind a shower, in a wall, whatever it is, if you can help locate it. And then you can get an inspector if you need to, and find out where that moisture is coming from that's feeding that problem. Because there, when you smell that there's a problem, so locate it. That's. That's the thing. The problem is when people get remediation done and there's a musty smell after ye, that's not good, that means something big was missed. So you got to start with inspection again, trying to find that issue. Use a moisture meter or thermal imaging. Those things can be helpful. Again, mold doesn't always need an active water leak. So you could go right past the spot on the wall with your thermal camera or your moisture meter that has the mold that's causing it. But often when it's strong enough to be putting off the smell, you can often have a water leak with it. So hopefully it's easier to find. But you got to find what's driving it.
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.
