Mold

[Stigmorgan]

So Sunday I went into the makerspace after having a few days off due to not feeling great I discovered 90% of the wood including items that are turned and finished were covered in white fluffy mold, I wiped everything off but yesterday it was growing back, I'm not shocked at the logs etc being covered but wouldn't have thought the finished items would be affected too, I'm guessing this is being caused by damp from the amount of green wet wood I have in there, any suggestions would be greatly recieved.

 

[williams1185]

do you have a space to store the wet wood outside if not can you put a dehumidifier in there

 

[SammyQ]

Your makerspace is now an unhealthy place. Breathing in that concentration of spores is concerning. May I suggest a good coat of bleach or propriety anti-mould on each wooden item? Sodium metabisuphide (I think) is the active ingredient.

 

[Cabinetman]

@SammyQ is absolutely right, that stuff can really make you ill. Do you have black mould as well?

 

[Stigmorgan]

No black mold just the white fluffy stuff. I've no outside space left in the garden but you guys have confirmed my thoughts so I'll have to look for somewhere in school to store stuff for a while so I can get the garage dried out and healthy again.

 

[SammyQ]

Stig, at the risk of being thought a Jonah or a Moaning Minnie, good thought on the damp wood, but for your own sake, consider some form of fumigation to kill the remaining spores? I'm a biologist by trade, with a paramedic son and his brother is a big hitter in the pharmaceutical industries, believe me, I am not over-egging the dangers. Lookup aspergillus and aspergillosis, or 'Farmer's lung'.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Stig, at the risk of being thought a Jonah or a Moaning Minnie, good thought on the damp wood, but for your own sake, consider some form of fumigation to kill the remaining spores? I'm a biologist by trade, with a paramedic son and his brother is a big hitter in the pharmaceutical industries, believe me, I am not over-egging the dangers. Lookup aspergillus and aspergillosis, or 'Farmer's lung'.

I don't think you're overstating, in fact this all explains the sinus infection and exhaustion I've had for the last week. Will be getting all the wet wood out at the weekend and cleaning everything else off with a bleach solution. Going to also look at fumigation to make sure I get it all.

 

[Phill05]

No black mold just the white fluffy stuff. I've no outside space left in the garden but you guys have confirmed my thoughts so I'll have to look for somewhere in school to store stuff for a while so I can get the garage dried out and healthy again.

Stig be thoughtful, be careful not to introduce mold into the school near the kids.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Stig be thoughtful, be careful not to introduce mold into the school near the kids.

It won't be near the kids, the space I'm thinking of is an old oil tank housing for the oil boiler and the wood will be sprayed with bleach to make sure it doesn't spread.

 

[Tris]

Might be time to think about a kiln for the green wood. I'm sure you could build a DIY one along the lines of a Sauno wood kiln, and I'm pretty sure there's a thread somewhere on here that includes one built from an old freezer.

Moulds are nasty things and a b*gger to get rid of but your lungs will thank you for it. Have you got a good mask?


I'd go for a minimum 10% bleach solution and cover everything using a fine mist sprayer then air well to dry out

 

[Agent_zed]

My house was very damp with condensation on the windows in cold weather so i bought a humidity meter so i could put values to it. We were hitting 80%+ at times.

We've got a good dehumidifier now which has brought it down into the 50-60% range. Still need to re-point a chimney which I think is letting water in.

Need to stay below 70% to keep mould under control.

the short of it is that a humidity meter has been quite useful. relatively cheap on ebay. I bought a HTC-1 digital one for about £5.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Might be time to think about a kiln for the green wood. I'm sure you could build a DIY one along the lines of a Sauno wood kiln, and I'm pretty sure there's a thread somewhere on here that includes one built from an old freezer.

Moulds are nasty things and a b*gger to get rid of but your lungs will thank you for it. Have you got a good mask?


I'd go for a minimum 10% bleach solution and cover everything using a fine mist sprayer then air well to dry out

I have a mask with built in goggles which means I end up taking it off constantly to wipe the mist/condensation out of the goggles section, kind negates wearing it really. We have chlorine tabs that we use to mop the floors if the dogs have an accident in the house, I can make up a strong enough solution of those to spray everything down, the advantage of that over bleach is that it will gas off over time so when I come to actually use the wood there won't be any lingering chemicals.

 

[Stigmorgan]

My house was very damp with condensation on the windows in cold weather so i bought a humidity meter so i could put values to it. We were hitting 80%+ at times.

We've got a good dehumidifier now which has brought it down into the 50-60% range. Still need to re-point a chimney which I think is letting water in.

Need to stay below 70% to keep mould under control.

the short of it is that a humidity meter has been quite useful. relatively cheap on ebay. I bought a HTC-1 digital one for about £5.

No need to buy a meter, I have boxes and boxes of CO2 meters that the government sent out to schools once they opened after lockdown, they give CO2, temp and humidity levels, will put one in there later to see what it says, I expect it will be very high at the minute. Air circulation in there could probably do with improving too.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Just went and took a couple of quick picks, the lime has white mould growing where I've painted the ends with PVA, the silver birch "dragon eggs" that I baked for a couple of hours and should have been dry have developed a green blotchy mould. The eggs that are finished and have a wax coat have small tiny green spots with fluff growing from them.

 

[TRITON]

Stig, at the risk of being thought a Jonah or a Moaning Minnie, good thought on the damp wood, but for your own sake, consider some form of fumigation to kill the remaining spores? I'm a biologist by trade, with a paramedic son and his brother is a big hitter in the pharmaceutical industries, believe me, I am not over-egging the dangers. Lookup aspergillus and aspergillosis, or 'Farmer's lung'.

I think that would only come about from prolonged exposure across more than likely years or several months at the very least, not a one off or a day or two.

Which is a sensible assumption to make. But in the interests of knowledge and understanding, I looked up 'Farmers Lung'
" The condition is associated with intense or repeated exposure to inhaled biologic dusts."

So intense or repeated exposure forr a farmer, is likely be he's wading in tons of the stuff. Probably in a giant barn type structure and the air is full of the dust. Spotting it on some timber you have and wiping it off, isn't really in the same league.

 

[Adam W.]

Looks like you've got a bad case of Aspergillus smellyfungus, watch out for the mycotoxins which can lead to a serious case of death.

 

[Stigmorgan]

I've been trying unsuccessfully to contact my gp for over a week, 111 weren't interested either, luckily SWMBO has an appointment with her gp this evening and is going to ask him about my symptoms over the last 12 days.
So as far as exposure goes, I would say at worst it would have started on Jan 20th when I cut the birch down that I used for the dragon eggs, before that everything i had in the workshop was low moisture content, I do still have a few pieces but they seem fairly clear, 90% of the mould is on the PVA painted ends of the lime and I was feeling rough before I got that on Tuesday last week. Perhaps something in the PVA combined with the massive increase in humidity from so much wet wood prompted the growth? In which case my exposure would only be over a few days.
Either way I'm going to find somewhere to remove the prepped blanks and unprepared logs to, spray them all with the strong mix of chlorine and leave them to dry out, then I need to clean and clear the workshop/garage, wiping everything down with the chlorine mix as I go.

 

[SammyQ]

I think that would only come about from prolonged exposure across more than likely years or several months at the very least, not a one off or a day or two.

Which is a sensible assumption to make. But in the interests of knowledge and understanding, I looked up 'Farmers Lung'
" The condition is associated with intense or repeated exposure to inhaled biologic dusts."

So intense or repeated exposure forr a farmer, is likely be he's wading in tons of the stuff. Probably in a giant barn type structure and the air is full of the dust. Spotting it on some timber you have and wiping it off, isn't really in the same league.

It's not as simple as that. Concentration is everything. Read your own quotation: "...intense or repeated..." 'intense' means 'high concentration'. To reduce the incidence of this nasty disease to a very specific set of circumstances you've defined is not the way the world works. Stig has still air in his ex-boiler shed, farmers have lots of moving air - even in draughty barns. Ergo, the concentration has time to build up in Stig's wee maker space.

Stig, Mucker, you are doing all the right things. Evacuate those piebald wood pieces to a safe distance, though It must tear at your heart strings to do so, and treat them with your supergoo. Spray down every surface - including the brickwork - as the airborne stuff can lodge anywhere, or fumigate the place.
It pains me to seem a killjoy when you are creating such wonderful stuff and being a stimulus to all of us lesser beings, but I'd just as rather see you healthy and getting your energy back.

 

[Stigmorgan]

It's not as simple as that. Concentration is everything. Read your own quotation: "...intense or repeated..." 'intense' means 'high concentration'. To reduce the incidence of this nasty disease to a very specific set of circumstances you've defined is not the way the world works. Stig has still air in his ex-boiler shed, farmers have lots of moving air - even in draughty barns. Ergo, the concentration has time to build up in Stig's wee maker space.

Stig, Mucker, you are doing all the right things. Evacuate those piebald wood pieces to a safe distance, though It must tear at your heart strings to do so, and treat them with your supergoo. Spray down every surface - including the brickwork - as the airborne stuff can lodge anywhere, or fumigate the place.
It pains me to seem a killjoy when you are creating such wonderful stuff and being a stimulus to all of us lesser beings, but I'd just as rather see you healthy and getting your energy back. View attachment 176305

It won't be wasted, just won't be to hand and easily picked up, once I find a sheltered spot for it I'll spray it down and leave it be until dry/seasoned, I've been meaning to empty the garage out and de-dust everything anyway

 

[Ollie78]

In our old flat we had a leak that we didn`t know about which had soaked into the walls and carpet, we were both getting sick and didn`t know why, I accidentally noticed the damp carpet one day and found a small forest of mould under the bed. The culprit was the overflow of the bathroom which was the other side of the wall but there was no evidence in the bathroom. I had to remove the plasterboard to over 1m high and it took ages to sort out. As soon as we got rid of the mould we got better in about a week.
We had some quite serious condensation in our current house too.
The most successful thing we have done was to put in a PIV (positive input ventilation).
The principal is that it continually pushes a bit of fresh air from outside into the home. This fresh air dilutes the saturated air preventing the condensation. Effectively the air has more carrying capacity for moisture so it is less likely to condense on surfaces.
Maybe this principal can be applied to your workspace as well.

Ollie