I have a home that has a closet with two outside walls. I get mold in this closet and try to keep it clean by washing the walls down with a bleach and water mixture. Is there a better cleaning product?
What type of paint (brand name) would you recommend as a primer and a topcoat?
If I cut off the top and bottom of that same closet door, about an inch or so, will this allow air to circulate throughout the closet?
Vince
Tom’s Answer:
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Tom: You can put an air conditioner register in the closet to get some air circulation. You can leave a light bulb on all the time to absorb some of the moisture and dry it out. You can get some desiccate material. Some of it would be known as DampRid.
Charlie: Yeah. Sure.
Tom: You know you hang them and they just absorb moisture. Those kinds of things. All it is is just dead air that’s humid in there and the wall might get cold since it’s an outside wall and you grow a little mildew on there. It’s not a terrible mold thing, but it’s lack of air flow is what it is.
Charlie: Well he goes on about his closet [inaudible]. If I cut off the top and bottom of that same closet door about an inch or so, will this this allow the air to circulate?
Tom: Yeah, it would look pretty stupid, but, no I mean…
Charlie: What if he put a…
Tom: Yes.
Charlie: Okay.
Tom: A louvered door.
Charlie: Yeah a louvered door, or he could cut a vent on the bottom and put a vent grill on there.
Tom: You can. And usually though at the bottom, there is an old code requirement nobody every follows but you have to have an inch clearance between the bottom of the floor and the top of the finished floor whether it’s tile or carpet, but a full inch at the bottom. And the reason they do that is so air will circulate through an air conditioned house as opposed to a closed-up house. It’s just not something that’s known but that always helps. And when we do homes in very humid climates where you don’t have a lot of air conditioning, you know, like in the subtropics or the tropics, literally they take these little cages and put a twenty- five watt light bulb on the floor of the closet and just leave it on all the time and it dries the air out enough to where your clothes never get moldy and your electricity usage is so tiny it’s not a big deal. But there are tricks behind it and the DampRid bags work well too.