Mold & mushroom in house, help

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FoolKiller1979
I know some of you guys have experience with building/renovating homes so I am going to try and get your opinions on this.

First a little background: A week and a half ago (9/24/05) I discovered our water heater was leaking. We shut it off and drained it but a plumber couldn't get to it for three days. My wife's grandparents own the house and they are too stubborn to do something like call a different plumber to get it fixed immediately, despite our suggestion. I got all the water cleaned up that I could but could not get behind the water heater into the corner. That corner was wet for 3 days, possibly longer. I did not discover the water heater leak until the puddle had stretched out of the utility closet so I have no clue how long it was actually there.

--Fast Forward--

Last night my wife was in the bathroom and found a mushroom growing behind the toilet. After a complete WTF moment we traced what I thought was mold at the time, but have since determined is water damage, along the bottom of the wall all the way back to the utility closet, where we found a black/dark green mold growing on the wall. I took pictures and then we scrubbed everything with bleach.

We are planning on tearing up the linoleum in the utility closet to see if there is mold underneath and then possibly the bathroom if it appears to need it. I figure the base boards will have to go as well. We are also buying a dehumidifier for the bathroom that will sit outside the utility closet because the bathroom is always humid and that may have contributed to the problem.

Here are the pictures. If anyone can tell me the best way to go about dealing with this it would be great. Also, am I at a major health risk or will the bleach scrub have done enough until we get it permanently fixed?

This is a Paint diagram of the bathroom (Not to scale).


This is the mushroom behind the toilet. From the diagram you can see it went around the divider wall.


This is what I now believe to be water damage, at first thought it was mold. A sign of a pipe leak somewhere or just the leaking water heater?


The black/dark green mold on wall. Toxic mold? I don't think it is but I have never seen it either.


Any professional advice on how to remove the mold permanently would be appreciated. Also, if anyone can tell from the pictures if this might be more than just the water heater leak, like a pipe leaking, that would be great too. Payment is not an issue since it will be her grandparents' responsibility as landowners. I do their lawn work and my wife runs their errands as rent, so it is more like rental property issue.

Thanks guys,

FK
 
1) Looking at your diagram - you have a really large sink, its almost as big as your bath! - does it have to be that big, you must use a lot of water!

2) Stop pissing behind your toilet, if your aim's that bad perhaps you should wipe after every wizz - just to be on the safe side.

3) Move house.

Hope this is of help.
 
TheCracker
1) Looking at your diagram - you have a really large sink, its almost as big as your bath! - does it have to be that big, you must use a lot of water!

2) Stop pissing behind your toilet, if your aim's that bad perhaps you should wipe after every wizz - just to be on the safe side.

3) Move house.

Hope this is of help.
Click to expand...
1) I said not to scale.
2) One too many Bass Ales on a Saturday night will do that too you. :cheers:
3) That's on year five of the ten year plan.


Anyone with REAL help?
 
I've had a little bit of experience with this from when I helped my parents redo our bathroom floor because of water damage.

You're probably going to have to replace the whole bathroom flooring, both the linoleum and the underlying plywood. Parts of the drywall around the molded areas should also be replaced along with the baseboards of the general area.

The utility closet flooring will more than likely also have to be replaced because of the standing water.

My parents also set up a drainage system for the water heater should this ever happen again. Buy a water heater drain pan which is like four or five inches larger in diameter than the water heater itself. Buy a length of PVC piping long enough to reach directly to the outside of the house. Measure everything up and cut a hole in the wall then shove the pipe through the hole. Cut another hole in the drain pan (if not already there) and feed the end of the pipe through it. Secure everything with the proper fittings and caulk around both the inside and outside of the hole to the exterior of your house and you're good to go.

edit:

As far as I know, the only way to permanently remove mold is to remove the affected areas and replace them.
 
No












Seriously, if your water heater has been leaking for some time the moisture will just be the bi-product of the bacteria from 'normal' bathroom activities. I doubt it's hazardous, but i still wouldn't use the mushroom in a pasta dish. Bleach will clean it in the short term, but you may want to replace some of your flooring and divider wall plaster if the old stuff has been exposed to moisture for a while - i doubt it would ever dry sufficiantly. You can get a house hold paint that has mould barrier properties, but its generally used to tart-up damp houses in the short term (ie if they're on the market)
 
This is my theory, and it's only because of what I've seen and had to fix. It is also based off the images that you have posted.

You're in for a big problem. It is water damage. Which means this is likely from years of rain water leaking in (roof problem) or the shower spray that gets on the floor. Since the bathroom is constantly humid it shows signs that there was a constant standing water issue. With the water, and the signs that it is seeping into the/from the wall, means all your underlayment and subfloor as likely destroyed. You're not likely into a structural issue, as the wood joists survive the water much easier.

So from the pictures it looks like you'll be replacing the wall board (at least the bottom 2 feet), the flooring and the subflooring. While you're ripping the walls out, you may want to think about re-wiring and adding GFI outlets (if you don't have any). Are the walls plaster? If so, you're better off removing it entirely and using a moisture resistant gypsum board (often called MRB)

As for cleaning the mold, diluted bleach is the best cure. Apply it multiple times to really kill it off. The mushroom is likely a big issue. If one that size can grow in there, you're likely to have others in the walls and under the floor.

How good is Grandparents money situation? You'll be in for a big cost on this one.

Good luck.
 
I guess I should have mentioned this before. The flooring is just concrete slab, as is teh whole house. It used to be a print shop in the 20s and 30s so wooden sub floors wouldn't have supported the huge printing machines. The house is concrete slab with cinder block outer walls covered in siding. The inside walls are the only wood and plaster there is.

Because of the concrete everywhere installing a drain would be a hassle that I don't know if they would pay for. The divider wall may have to be removed, but I will suggest just leaving it out since it is just to hide the toilet from the door, which closes anyway/

Thanks.
 
Yeah .. that mushroom is bigger than any ones I've seen in my backyard.

:scared:
 
FoolKiller
The divider wall may have to be removed, but I will suggest just leaving it out since it is just to hide the toilet from the door, which closes anyway
Click to expand...


If your divider wall is plaster board over a wooden frame, you might get away with just replacing the board, it depends on if the frame has water damage also. On the plus side getting rid of the wall will make your bathroom seem bigger.
 
FoolKiller
I guess I should have mentioned this before. The flooring is just concrete slab, as is teh whole house. It used to be a print shop in the 20s and 30s so wooden sub floors wouldn't have supported the huge printing machines. The house is concrete slab with cinder block outer walls covered in siding. The inside walls are the only wood and plaster there is.
Click to expand...
Which both eases and compounds your problem. Is this on an exterior wall? or is it all interior partitions?

If you've got mold in there, and you're on a slab, chances are high that inside your walls, is considerably more mold. It is starting to look like you'll be ripping out the extent of the wall board in the entire room. Be careful as you do it, so you release as little mold as possible into the air.

Skip the drain, instead build a pan. You'll have to raise the water heater, but it'll help considerably if this issue comes up again. Building the pan as deep as possible.
 
Although I am not expert in area by any means, I do know it is a hot topic through out home/commerical construction today. There are a number of website's you might want to look into too that could help you: clean-up the problem, and then redesign to prevent future problems.
Many sites list new materials like those Der Alta mentioned, plus ideas on how to reduce the potential for it to arrise again. Just type it in Google, and you will see the array of sites that come up.
 
Der Alta
If you've got mold in there, and you're on a slab, chances are high that inside your walls, is considerably more mold. It is starting to look like you'll be ripping out the extent of the wall board in the entire room. Be careful as you do it, so you release as little mold as possible into the air.
Click to expand...

Where a mask as you do it anyway. This stuff is nothing to mess around with. People have had reactions to even the smallest amount of air born mold that have killed.
 
I'm not going to play down what AO has said, but there are a few other points I want to make, and questions I want to ask:

1) The mold, unless you are severely allergic, is not a serious health issue unless you are exposed to it for a long time. The amount I see there, assuming it's been around for a month or two, should not cause you much harm. Mold is the asbestos of the 2000s - tons of hype, some real but actually fairly low health risks, lots of money spent cleaning it up and paying lawyers. In the 2010s it's going to be fiberglass insulation's turn.

2) Thinking back, can you come up with any idea how long the visible water damage along the edge of the floor might have been there? AO is right; if it's on a slab, it's possible ground moisture is wicking up through the concrete and into the wall. However, it's equally possible that isn't happening, and that this was just the result of a small but chronic leak from the water heater, which suddenly got worse.

3) Drywall is hard to stop mold in if it is soaked. If it was condensed humidity - say, on the bathroom ceiling in a room without an exhaust fan - you'd have a good chance of bleaching it to death and painting over it with white shellac. But in this situation it's really the result of being wet and absorbing that moisture, and the mold gets carried throughout the board. This means that, as AO suggests, you're going to want to remove about the bottom 4 feet of it or so. If nothing else that lets you do a thorough examination of the wall framing so you can see if it is showing signs of rising damp (through the ground slab) or whether it's just wet drywall from this suddenly-worse leak.

If the framing looks good and dry and is not showing signs of mold itself, I'd say just cut out and replace the damaged drywall (cutting well past the edge of the visible mold). If it's most of the wall surface, it will probably be easier to just remove the whole sheet and replace it.

And put a pan under the water heater, also as AO suggests. It should be available from a home center.

Good luck!
 
Well, it looks like my worst fears are being confirmed.

We did have a roof leak last year, but it was on the other side of the house. I hope that isn't where this started from. That could mean full infestation of the walls. Of course, we are at the bottom of a hill and water might be coming down and getting in underneath somehow. I'm not too sure though.

The walls showing mold are all interior walls. The kitchen side of the wall is not showing any signs of problems, but that might not mean anything other than it stays dry because it gets directly hit from the AC (window units) in the living room and bedroom.

As for the actual destruction and rebuilding of walls and such, I will leave that to a professional. I have a heart condition and my doctor would probably throw a fit if he found out I was working that close to mold. For this work I will probably move out for a few days and let someone else deal with it. The supplies for replacing anything with will be left up to my wife's grandparents based on their financial ability. They replaced our entire roof when we found the leak without blinking so I guess they are okay on money.

Thanks for all the help guys. I haven't had much chance to do a lot of research yet because we discovered this just before we went to bed last night. I do have the numbers of some places locally to call. I just wanted to know what I was looking at.

Unfortunately typing "mushrooms growing in the house" in Google brings back a totally different type of site than what I was looking for.
 
Duke
2) Thinking back, can you come up with any idea how long the visible water damage along the edge of the floor might have been there? AO is right; if it's on a slab, it's possible ground moisture is wicking up through the concrete and into the wall. However, it's equally possible that isn't happening, and that this was just the result of a small but chronic leak from the water heater, which suddenly got worse.
Click to expand...
We only moved in in June and the bathroom always looked crappy. We intended to replace the floor from day one. I can't remember seeing the water damage then or not, but I do know the edge of the linoleum always looked horrible. That doesn't really answer your question, I'm afraid.

I do know the mushroom and the wall mold in the utility closet were not there when we had the water heater replaced.

Would the rest of the floor be wet if it was coming up through the concrete? Is this something that could mean pulling up all the flooring and carpet to seal the concrete? :nervous:
 
Now, if you weren't a premium member, you'd see these nice advertisements at the bottom of the page giving you all sorts of options on waterproofing and "Mold Remediation"

As for your problem....
I kinda doubt that you have a problem of water coming up through the concrete slab. If you did, it would have showed up in larger areas a long time ago (assuming that the house is old-ish). But if you want to be sure that water doesn't come up, I suppose that you can paint the slab with a waterproofer. I don't think people actually do it for foundations, but it's used on the exterior of stucco and whatnot.

As for the plaster...plaster isn't drywall/sheetrock. It's much more of a pain to work with plaster, and you can't use both at the same time. If you go about ripping apart walls to any large extent, I would suggest you think about replacing the bathroom with sheetrock instead of plaster. Since it's a bathroom application, you'll want the moisture resistant stuff that DA mentioned. It looks exactly like normal drywall, but it's usually green instead of grey. If you hire someone, they'll know what it is, or you can ask the people at Home Depot or whatever your do-it-yourself home repair store is.

oh, and a quick wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drywall

Best of luck to you with the problems.
 
I don't know about the mushroom, but I do know how to deal with the mold. You see, the same thing happened to us, only on the ceiling. They're two ways you can deal with this: get special, very expensive, paint that dosen't work half the time, or take some bleach (if I remember correctly), mix with water (I think 1:1 ratio, but I don't think it really matters as long as you put water in the mix), put in a spray bottle (like the ones for window cleaner), and spray away. Works every time. You just have to spray there every now and then, as it isn't permanent.

EDIT: It is the same mold that I had. Its completely harmless.
 
LOL, sorry, but that mushroom made me laugh.

Knock it down and start over. Mold is HORRIBLE, and is a pain in the ass to get rid of.
 
Wow, sorry to hear about your problems, but I found it pretty darn cool that a mushroom could grow in such an area!
 
Well, after a good scrubbing the "water damage" appears to just be stain from the rust/dirty water because it came up with bleach water and a toothbrush and teh wall still feels solid. I still need to remove the baseboards to see how the bottom of the walls look. Tonight we are tearing up the linoleum to let the concrete completely dry.

My wife went to Lowe's to see what they recommended and they gave her this chemical mold "killer" that has a guarantee (fingers crossed) and a warning that it should only be used outside. When my wife pointed this out to the Lowe's worker his response was, "Well, it has some strong fumes but if you keep it well ventilated you should be fine." :scared: Anyone know how you keep a closet well ventilated? If it was a well ventilated area I might not be having this problem.

Oh well, it claims that it will kill it permanently. We will see. Once we get the linoleum up I am putting a dehumidifier in there, permanently.


As for the mushroom being funny and somewhat unbelievable; why do you think I took a picture? I was going to make it the desktop on my PC but my wife said no. :grumpy: When she pointed it out to me I started laughing and said something along the lines of it being cool. After she hit me on the shoulder and said it wasn't I realized that once again she was right and I was wrong (whatever). I have emailed that picture to pretty much everyone I know.
 
FoolKiller
Anyone know how you keep a closet well ventilated?

I realized that once again she was right and I was wrong (whatever).
Click to expand...
Put a fan in the closet, close the door to the rest of the house, open the window to the outside.

And doesn't it just bug you how they're always right?
 
Purple Platypus
Put a fan in the closet, close the door to the rest of the house, open the window to the outside.

And doesn't it just bug you how they're always right?
Click to expand...

Should I have the room closed off if we are going to be in there working?




Yeah, you can have a mountain of evidence and somehow their "I said so" attitude wins out over all. And if everything they planned falls apart like you said it would, they were not wrong, you sabotaged it.
 
FoolKiller
Should I have the room closed off if we are going to be in there working?
Click to expand...
When working with very noxious fumes, you want to keep the area well ventilated. "Well ventilated" means lots of fresh area moving through the area. Blowing the air out is what you're looking for when using the fungicide. If you're working in there, you're breathing loads of toxic fumes. You need to suck fresh air in and blow the rest of the air out.

When you're doing construction in there, closing the area off is simply to cut down on dust in the rest of the house.

Having a fan in the bathroom is always a good idea. IT not only cuts down on the moisture in the air, it'll ventilate after a trip to Taco Bell.
 
Dude!

You know you want to cook that bad boy up! I say you eat the mushroom. To hell with the "health concerns", go for it man!

Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!*










*Just kidding, don't eat it.... but seriously... eat it.
 
danoff
Dude!

You know you want to cook that bad boy up! I say you eat the mushroom. To hell with the "health concerns", go for it man!

Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!*


*Just kidding, don't eat it.... but seriously... eat it.
Click to expand...
I read where someone online said something about eating one in a situation liek mine and they claim that they got a stomach ache, then everything turned purple, and then they passed out a few hours later. When he woke up he claimed to have had a huge headache.

Whether true or not it was funny.
 
emad
give it a try, it might be psychedelic :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I can see it now:

Person 1: "FoolKiller killed himself by eating his toilet mushroom."

Person 2: "Fool."
 
FoolKiller
I can see it now:

Person 1: "FoolKiller killed himself by eating his toilet mushroom."

Person 2: "Fool."
Click to expand...

Toilet mushroom doesn't exactly make it sound yummy.
 
Unless you are a perfect aim into that toilet every single time, I really dont think that mushroom would taste good. :yuck:
Still a funny thread. Shocking but funny.
 
FoolKiller
I read where someone online said something about eating one in a situation liek mine and they claim that they got a stomach ache, then everything turned purple, and then they passed out a few hours later. When he woke up he claimed to have had a huge headache.

Whether true or not it was funny.
Click to expand...
WHAT!!!??? SOmeone else had a mushroom growing next to their toilet??!!
 

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