How to clean mold from the air
- Risty
- Sep 8, 2017
- 3 min read
What do you do when the air isn’t safe for you after you have removed the mold?
For those of you just joining this series, my husband and I have suffered from toxic black mold poisoning for seven years. We found a lot of mold in our home two years, tried to clean it unsuccessfully and contaminated and lost almost everything that we owned which you can read in previous posts.
I write to help others avoid the same mistakes that we made and I continue to learn new things every week as I research the topic.
We discovered mold again in our current house and had to rip out and replace exterior walls. We did a lot of things differently which you can read about in other posts as well as learned a few more things we should not have done.
As we are coming out of the re-construction phase, we are trying to ensure the air is safe enough for me to return. I am highly sensitive. No matter how hard you try to be careful, some spores will get airborn during the process. These spores can be breathed in, leading to problems (which you can read about here).
We took air samples which came back at the high end of the normal range, however, I still react when I spend any amount of time in the house. So the house is still not safe for me.
So what do you do when the mold has been removed, it’s testing normal, but you are still reacting to the space?
Everything needs to be wiped down with a disinfectant. Bleach does not work, I have been told ammonia is better. Certain local professional cleaning places use a special concentration containing diluted liquid thyme that is not available over the counter. The entire house needs to be wiped down from top to bottom starting with the ceiling and left to right to keep from recontaminating anything.
Once the area’s surfaces are clean, the air needs to be cleaned. There is a lot of confusion about different types of air cleaners and which ones work best. I met with a local professional yesterday, (see I told you I was still learning. He by the way, told me we did a few things wrong…why didn’t I know he existed a couple of months ago??) to discuss options for our home.
An ozone machine changes and O2 molecule to an O3 molecule and wipes out odors. It won’t do much for mold, the spores will still be in the air.
Air purifiers and air scrubbers are given a Clean Air Delivery Rate that means how many cubic feet of air it cleans per minute.
A professional air scrubber pushes 500 cubic feet of air per minute through four different filters including HEPA filters.
An air purifier that can be purchased in home improvement stores would not have the amount of filters and would not push a high amount of air. They will filter some things but they will not be as effective in removing mold spores from a contaminated construction zone.
For example, the Honeywell HEPA filter air purifier we purchased, pushes 180 cubit feet per minute. So what if you purchase several? Would they do the job? I don’t know the answer to that question. We did purchase several. Every time I visit the house it seems that my reactions are less and less severe. However, we also plan to hire the professional air scrubber. Our health just isn’t worth the “what if” factor.
Due to my severe allergies, the professional recommended installing an air purifier filtration system that mounts onto the heating and cooling system from Aprilaire which would have HEPA filters and a blue light ultraviolet light that kills bacteria and fungus before they circulate in the home.
Stay tuned to see if we install one and how we feel it works.
Update: The professional came and used an air scrubber. He also wiped down our house from ceiling to floor with disinfectant and fogged the house with disinfectant on top of that. The mold count was good with the air tests, and after we moved back in, I became mold free. It worked and we saved our house!
https://www.aprilaire.com/whole-house-products/whole-house-products/air-purifiers
Editors Note: See Disclaimer
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