On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 11:25:55 -0400, Adam Kubias
wrote:

On 2015-03-09 5:45 PM, micky wrote:


I had a flooded basement that started to smell of mold, so I bought a 50
pound bag of salt of some sort, at a janitorial supply store. I took a
plastic bucket and some of that brown masonite-like stfuff with the
filligree holes in it, that was hot stuff in the '50's, and I cut a
piece to divide the bucket vertically. I put the salt in one side of
the bucket and I put the bucket where I smelled mold. The next day
there was an inch of water in the bottom, probably on both sides, but I
could see it and when it was fuller, puur it out from the side that was
otherwise empty.

Strangely, the smell disappeared only where hte bucket was. I actually
noticed the smell more when I was walking up the basment steps, so I put
the bucket on a step. In a day or two, the smell was gone from that
step, but I could still smell it on the others. I had to put the bucket
on each step in turn. What's stranger is that my nose was about 5
feet higher than the bucket, but it still worked this way. I poured
out a lot of water, maybe put in salt a second time. Eventually I got
rid of all the smell and I gave most of the bag to a gas station I
thought might need it. A 50 pound bag was still a lot cheaper than a
whole bunch of 4 oz. bags.

I don't understand how this is working. The Road Salt is absorbing the
water? The mold dies because there is no water?

I don't get it either. I guess it was road salt. That's something
that a janitorial supply house would have too, for siidewalks and
parking lots. It was absorbing the water from the air.

When my basement flooded, I coudln't throw away everything that got wet.
Most of it was cardboard boxes that sat on the floor and held things.
It took a long time to find stronger than average boxes in the sizes I
needed. So I just let them dry out. None of the boxes every showed any
mold or ever smelled bad -- I still have most of them --, but they
probably kept the humidity level in the basement higher than normal.

So the mold started growing on a sheet rock wall, that was painted
white. When I found the black stuff (behind a dresser I used for tools)
I used bleach to kill the mold. The black area stopped getting bigger,
so the mold must have been dead. I thought the black area would change
to white again, but that must have come from watching too many wolfman
movies. When I realized it woudln't turn white on it's own, I painted
it white, having added mold "suppressor" or whatever it's called, to the
paint.

Yet the basement smelled bad, even to me, and I'm not very picky.

Now that I think about it, I'd probably had the bucket in the middle of
the room for a couple weeks or more, water filling up the otherwise
empty side, and periodically I'd dump the water, salty water I guess (it
certainly wasn't clear and transparent), in the laundry tub and it would
go down the drain.

And I'm sure I added more salt to the bucket, probably twice, and iirc
the smell in the main part of the basement went away, but it still
smelled when I started to walk up the stairs. The floor is either
cement or vinyl tiles, but the stairs are carpeted, with padding, and I
had no idea what the carpet might have absorbed. But the real amazing
thing was what I said. I'd put the bucket on a step for one, two days,
or even if it was 3 or 4, and the smell would go away when I stood on
that step, with my nose 5 feet above the carpet. I think maybe then I
moved the bucket two steps up, but later I had to go back and put the
bucket on the step I skipped, to get rid of the smell when I stood on
that step.

I don't get it, but it's confirmed my pre-existing habit of trying all
sorts of remedies, even if I don't think they have any good reason to
work.