Help. Black Mold & New floor question

Hello,

I have basic question about black mold I seem to have in my family room. All comments appreciated.

My family room is on a slab. There is padding, old shag carpet, and PERGO installed OVER the carpet. Of course, this not so good. The Pergo is chipping, and seperating, and is just bad.

We pulled up 1 pergo panel by the threshold and the carpet has a little black mold on it. I can assume maybe I have black mold everwhere under the PERGO, although I could be wrong.

Anyway, I am having EVERYTHING ripped up, removed, and a an underlayment and real hardwood floor applied to the concrete slab.

Although the floor installer will remove everything, he can't be responsible for the "elimination" of the black mold. He did agree to wait 1 hour inbetween removal and installation, so I may mop the cement with bleach or some other solution. Then he'll lay the flooring.

Here's my question.... Once I have a bare cement floor, what solution would I use to eliminate any black mold that may still be there? Pure Bleech?

50/50 with water? Or some special cleaner?

Thanks in advance. Bill

Reply to
Bill
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Use pure bleach but some will say dilute it, remember its already diluted up to 98% with water. What kind of vapor barrier will you use. Best would be oil paint then plastic, one large sheet, no seams to come undone, best would be tear out and after the bleach and paint are dry to put in the new floor.

Reply to
m Ransley

Bill,

As another posted stated, bleach as the way to go. But I see another problem: 1 hour is not nearly enough time! You have to clean the entire floor with the bleach, and it could be slow going if a lot of scrubbing is needed. Then it should have time to dry - the last thing you want is to try to do an installation over a wet concrete pad.

I'd be asking the guy for at least 24 hours, maybe more if it's a large room. Best would probably be to do removal on a Friday and installation the following Monday - that way you have the entire weekend to do whatever it takes to remove the mold, and let it dry thoroughly.

Eric Law

Reply to
EL

You need more time to let it dry. Perhaps several days. Also, if this area got wet from leakage from below, from a plumbing leak within the slab, or springs under the house, further diagnostic work needs to be done before any new, especially expensive, flooring is considered. Best case, there may have been a surface spill that seeped under the flooring, causing mildew and mold. Whatever, the pic looks like there is a major moisture source in that area, that needs to be examined.

Reply to
Roger

Bleach.....I think Home Depot sells a Bleach that is less diluted for germicide cleaning. However, you should let the bleach/scurbing set in for at least a day and air out....then I'd treat it again and let it dry completely.....this could also depend on where you live...humidity....use a fan blowing across the floor to help dry it. Make sure there is a good seal/vapor barrier before putting anything covering back

Terry

Reply to
Terry Cano

This looks like what happened at our house..But ours was old vinyl flooring..The floor started turning black in the center, and got bigger..We had a flooring guy come out and he indicated we had a plumbing leak..We had an engineering company check and the drain lines under the house were leaking in the slab...They dug a tunnel under the house, jack hammered out the old cast iron pipe and replaced it with pvc..But our problem was twice fold..The leak also caused the soil under the house to swell causing the house to heave up four inches causing foundation problems..You don't even want to know what that cost to fix...Gosh I hope yours was something spilled and leached into that carpet..I can't imagine who would install laminate flooring over carpet..But have it checked carefully.... John

Reply to
John

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