Went to flip mattress over & it's covered in mold!

hermum

An awful lot of spores are really hazardous to health, I would ditch the mattress, it may have been expensive but not as important as keeping your health.
Mould in houses grows through condensation, rather than penetrating damp.
Do you keep the rooms well aired?

reluctantworkingmum

dont panic too much. Dry it out thoroughly. Run a dehumidifier in the room (you might get the landlord to cough up towards this if the wall is damp) until no water is showing. Hoover it very thoroughly with the best hoover you can beg or borrow. Wipe surface gently with very diluted bleach. It should then be fine. Good luck
(but as others have said - the mould will return if you dont get the damp wall sorted. No one should sleep in a room with a damp wall - will lead to chest problems)

kizzie_nikita

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I moved the mattress out of the bedroom and in to the livvingroom which is the warmest room of the house, I hoovered, wiped and then hoovered again, and left it next to the radiator to dry out for 4 days so we slept on the sofa instead. I then wiped it with lemony diluted beach and hoovered again. I'm going to throw it out once we have a new mattress but until then i'm going to wipe and hoover it regularly.

Forgot to add, the mattress still has a green tinge/colour to it, but i did manage to get alot off, but no matter how much wiping and hoovering i couldn't budge the rest.

In regards as to why there's damp, we're 100% sure that it's due to the leak/guttering needs clearing, as it only started when the storms and torrential rain started coming in.

The last 2 houses we lived in which extremely mouldy, but the landlords did eventually sort that, so i know how much rooms need to be aired and that.

I open the windows in all rooms for a couple of hours each day to air the rooms and let the air circulate, and often open windows during the day to air the rooms also. The rooms are heated enough and when having a shower the bathroom door stays closed and the (very large) window is kept open during and after.

The kitchen the window is open during cooking as is the extractor fan. The only place the damp is was on this outside wall, which the bed was against & yes that wall is a colder than the rest. The window in the bedroom is often got condensation on it, even with the airing on the room. (Room also has a vent in it, which also is open.

I must admit, i have had cold like symptoms which dissapeared the few nights we slept on the sofa, possibly to do with the damp/moudly room? But have lived in a million times worse before.

Once again, thank you so much for your replies, i'm sorry about how much i've wrote i just tried to explain any questions there has been.

P/s I live in Manchester

telynores

For future reference :- do not turn no turn mattresses. The side you're meant to sleep on has fibers which are there to cope with damp our bodies produce. Never make your bed without airing it, at best for several hours. Look up 'Borax uses' this may help with existing problems.
Good luck.

beautiful_ravens

I sympathize with your mould problem.

I live in a mouldy house, and my bedroom [Ive rotated the bedrooms and slept in all of them over the last 7 years] is always the mouldiest - I think its something about two adults breathing and producing heat/damp compared to one or two kids, none of whom share a bed. Its really, really strange. The kids rooms are never as bad.

No matter what I do, mould grows on clothes in my wardrobe. Ive cleaned, aired, heated, not heated, opened windows, tried a fan heater, oil filled heater, convector heater, central heating, dehumidifier, pots of salt...nothing works.
The landlord knows, and completely re-plastered the two outside walls and put air vents in the windows - didnt change anything. I have to wash my entire wardrobe out at least twice a year - and all the clothes. Its always the cotton/leather/suede that gets mould on it. If I hang a picture, furry mould grows on the back of it but not on the wall where its hanging.

My suggestion is that maybe the mattress being a no turn one with these special fibres as mentioned above is the problem? Perhaps a normal mattress wouldn't be so bad...Also, Ive noticed that mould doesnt always do what you think it should be doing. EG how can I have no mould on the walls, but mould on my clothes inside a wardrobe? No idea.
Could the damp be related to a carpet - if there is one - is the carpet or the underlay damp?
I wish I had the answers for you!

sisser00

I sympathise and agree with what everybody said. The mould keeps coming back because of the cold spores in the air. This is dangerous to health. I have a similiar problem and also have a heat recovery system in my property. It does not do anything but pull my electricity as the outside walls are not insulated, some have damp insulation because the walls were not plugged before the rains came down and to add insult to injury a pipe had been broken just under my property. It took years for the Council to fix it, but they gave me no information. I am a leaseholder, Im freezing sitting down, my walls are cold, my floors are cold, even the rugs are cold.. I cant sleep in my bedroom. Even my clothes are cold and if you blow you can see the air. One last thing I had to get rid of my 3 plants as I had mushrooms growing in them. That shows how unhealthy the place was. My council continually fail to help and everything costs money i just dont have.

Snowy_Owl

Get out ASAP!!!! I lived in a rented flat that had mould in the bedroom. The factos didn't beleive there was mould in the bedroom - my clothes were affected, my mattress, the wooden bed slats....they thought i was making it up coz " it wasn't there when I moved in".......found out from a neighbour about the flood!!!!! When I moved out, moved my chest of drawers and found a massive mould pattern on the outside wall.Thought that was a suitable leaving present consodering they didn'y believe me that there was ANY damp....

kizzie_nikita

It's taken 2 weeks for the landlord to get back to me, and they're sending someone over so i'm now awaiting a time and date for that...

Lets hope that once the leak has been solved (if they dont tell me its my fault, which it's not) then this damp and mold will go away!

Sadly, my mattress is not salvageable, but i'm sure they don't care.

John_Pierpoint

When houses were built the old fashioned way out of bricks, it was accepted that it took more than a year for a new home to "dry out".
I built a new internal wall out of brickwork so only 4 inches thick, one spring long weekend, using bricks soaked by a week of continuous rain.
[I used bricks for two reasons (1) they were free, (2) I wanted an element of thermal mass that would be heated by sunshine in the day time and act as a heat store.]
The new room was finished and plastered within the week and I painted it and furnished it within the week.
The following winter a mass of mould started growing behind the sideboard.

Blackpool_Saver

Get rid of that mattress