Not-woodworking - Mold in shop

Bartee Lamar

Member
Messages
499
Location
Alpharetta GA ( Metro Atlanta)
I am sure everyone has heard about the epic floods in Atlanta.

I was very lucky, but did end up with about 1 1/2" of water over entire basement, aka the shop !!!!

I started on Tuesday 9/22 sucking water out of basement. LOML and I do mean LOML finished on Wednesday 9/23 ( 2 hours of shop vac sucking water ).

I really got depressed with the smell and then starting worrying about where it was coming from.

Mold grows very quickly !!!! MDF was made to grow mold.
 

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So yesterday, after morning workout, I started in the shop and basement about 9:30am. I finished at 5pm. Short break for lunch.

I went around the entire perimeter of the basement. Cleaned all sawdust from around the walls. Sprayed walls and floor with mildew/mold killer and clorox in water.

Generally cleaned entire basement. The smell is going away. I am ok with being in the shop now.

The wet stuff in the pics is the killer spay mixture after I cleaned.
 

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Then I decided to fix the sheet storage area since I lost about 4-6 inches off a lot of sheet goods.

Of course the had the good effect of organizing the sheet goods...
 

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OH yea....

There are 5 contractor garbage bags full of wood and stuff that got cleaned out as I went.

This really needed to be done.

I have also bought and setup a dehumidifier. $150 from HD.

It filled up it's little bucket over night. My shop has been running about 75% humidity which I have suspected was a problem.

I am going to put a auto sump pump on the the dehumidifier so I do not have to keep dumping it out.

I will let y'all know where I end up on the shop humidity.
 
We had about 20" of water in Atlanta in 5 days. ( One section of metro ATL has 15" in one day ).

My new gutters had solved all of the water problems up till now.

The ground around the foundations just gets saturated and the water finally comes under the block walls at the bottom.

This is being call a 100 year flood or maybe a 200 year flood. It was really crazy. Interstate 20 west of the outer loop was CLOSED for 4 days.

So I consider myself lucky.
 
Sorry about the problem Bartee, if one and half inch of water made that mess I wonder what would do 10".

Take it on the positive side, as you say it needed to be done, so it has forced you to do it.
 
A few years back I had 4-5" in the basement and this past year had 1-2" on 4 occasions due to the electric being out and the sump pump not running. I had a major clean up and used Simple Green to scrub everything. I didn't have a mold problem and the basement smelled great for a while. The sump pump problem is fixed and I installed a dehumidifier. Mine has a port to hook up a hose so I don't have to drain the bucket.
 
Sorry for the loss. Glad you were able to find the silver lining and get some cleanup done and fix up your sheet goods stash. Now, keep it tidy and don't anger the Shop-gods again!!!
 
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