Bought my first property and there’s mold in the basement!

[Ethan Daniel Dacar]

I just purchased my first property and the house came with many more problems then the inspection report found. The two biggest problems I’m dealing with at the moment are a flooding basement and mold growing in the crawl space. “chaetomium which is toxic”

The basement floods from window wells not being properly drained and cracks in the foundation. I’m doing all the work myself and I’ve already fixed those two issues with temporary roofs over the window wells and using epoxy injection kits to seal the cracks in the foundation.

The basement is completely demo’d. I recently sprayed down the whole basement with concrobium “mold killer” and tried to keep the humidity levels down because that’s the only way concrobium can effectively kill the mold. I removed the dead mold by taking the top layer of dirt out of the crawl space and everything seemed to be good until recently. I’ve found some white mold scattered around the basement area “white mold is like baby mold, once it matures it will change its color” it’s not too much mold and it’s only in a few different spots. I think it’s coming back because I couldn’t keep the humidity levels low enough for the concrobium to work effectively, I sprayed every square inch of the basement with the mold killer.

Just looking for any thoughts or recommendations on what my next step should be.

Last note, while working in the basement I’ve been in proper PPE because the mold is toxic to humans.

[Alex Rodriguez]

Working in labs (Microbiologist) as my career. I'll tell you how many people will think the "black mold" is so scary. It not actually as severe as people make it out to be, however hyped. Either way it should still be taken care of. The only sure way to remove any mold, does not matter on species, is to remove the moisture. If the moisture is not removed all mold will eventually grow back and fast.