The basement nightmare continues

I picked up some Mold*Off from work and took it home. I have used it before so I knew exactly what to expect. I sprayed all the mouldy areas with it and let it sit until the next night. Most of the staining had disappeared. From a generation of working hard, I’m not used to cleaners doing the work for me. If I don’t scrub I feel like I’ve cheated somehow. So I picked up a scrub brush, applied another coat and scrubbed away until I felt satisfied with my progress. I knew I was wasting my energy. The product does the work for me and I was not “helping” by scrubbing.

Then I got to work cleaning up the dirt on the cement blocks. This was time consuming and boring. Vacuum, wipe, scrub. Next area. Vacuum, wipe, scrub. Next area. Vacuum, wipe, scrub. My arms were on fire by the time I was done. I really shouldn’t have wasted my energy scrubbing the mould off the walls. What was I thinking?

What I learned: Don’t waste your energy scrubbing if you don’t have to. Trust that the product knows what its doing and follow the directions properly.

Progress! Wall half way complete.
There are holes in the walls
from the old framing.

Now my walls are clean and the mould is gone. Wow! My basement smells better. Hmmm… I’d like to keep it that way. So off to Canadian Tire I went to get a dehumidifier. It is easily the best investment I have made. At first the dehumidifier was pulling 50 pints of water every 20 hours. Three weeks later it is pulling 50 pints in 30 hours. I’m happy with that. Obviously there was too much humidity in the air and it needed to be addressed. Knowing that now, I will always make sure I have a dehumidifier running in my basement so I hopefully never have to worry about mould again.

I was happy to leave the basement completely unfinished. The air flow was wonderful. I asked my younger brother to come in and take a look at my progress. He informed me that it is code to have the walls insulated and it will help with keeping energy in. Of course, what I hear is “Finish your basement”. Ugh… just when I thought I was done.

My husband and I sat down to draw out the floor plan. Then we called in the plumber, electrician, and bought all of our supplies. I started to finish the walls with insulation and framing.

Replacing old drains. Where did my floor go?

As we started to have our plumbing run for a new bathroom, the plumber found a problem. The drains were original to the house and made of clay. Overtime they had disintegrated and were leaking water into our foundation. Oh my goodness. It’s a good thing we found it right away so that we don’t have a problem in the future with having to replace more than just our drains. 

To date we have found three causes for our mould issue:

1. Framing wood directly against cement
2. Too much humidity in the air
3. Drains leaking under the ground.

 Phase three is under way I'll post progress soon.