Basement water issues
Ever been to LA? Mexico City? Delhi? Any other gross city with lots of smog, trash, and/or numbers 1 & 2?
That air is probably better than the air in your house. Yuck!
Time to put on my energy auditor hat. (I am a BPI Building Analyst, after all, just like the guys in the Dominion program.)
I recently saw a house that was WAY worse than New Delhi. This basement stank of mold and mildew. Gross. It’s a foreclosure that was recently bought that I went to look at. And it’s a serious indoor air quality hazard.
Strangely, the thing that tipped me off was this ceiling fan. Note how bowed the blades are, that means they have been seriously WET for a LONG DANG TIME.
Once I was tipped off, I started looking around. I noticed that the family room area of the basement had been raised up with a 2×4, then plywood was put on top of it. This means there was probably standing water down there with some regularity.
I also noticed that rather than drywall, OSB had been used for the walls. It must have been on sale. Unfortunately, OSB doesn’t do all that well with moisture, so it was moldy with a capital M.
The bathroom was covered with mold as well, check out above the toilet. Those little black spots? Well, I guess I can’t technically call them mold, since I’m not a mold expert, but they are definitely organic in nature…
Hey, at least somebody put in a GFCI outlet! You won’t get the bejeebers shocked out of you while you breathe nasty air!
OK, so enough grossing you out. What’s the point? There are 2. The 2 points are some of the most common reasons behind moisture problems:
- 1. Clean your stinking gutters and make sure they drain away from the house! Otherwise that water builds up right by your house and comes through the basement wall!
- 2. Vent your bathrooms out of the house! All that steam goes somewhere! Like into mold on the wall or on your roof deck!
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