moldy mouldering mold

May 12, 2008 5:14 PM

Will a dehumidifier work for my mold problem? The size charts say a 25 pint one (~$150) would be fine for my square footage, but would one be able to cover the bathroom, living room and bedroom considering they are separate rooms? Would the air flow be good enough, or should I get some of the much smaller (seems like less well-reviewed too) dehumidifiers that go for $50-$70 on Amazon and put one in each room?

I've been in my (~600-700 sq feet) apartment for about a month, and already there are traces of mold growing on the ceilings in the bathroom and living room. I've also noticed a lot of condensation on the windows, especially when I run the heaters. The bathroom has a vent that I cleaned tons of mold out of, but even so it does not seem to work very well.

Complicating factors: I have a fish tank that evaporates quite a bit of water, and the bathroom has no wall outlet so ideally I would just get one dehumidifier and put it in the bedroom or something.

Thanks for any advice or shared experiences!

posted by Post-it Goat to home & garden (5 comments total)

It might be beneficial to get a hygrometer and see if humidity is actually a problem in your environment.
posted by gjc at 5:53 PM on May 12

good thinking. I'll do that before I spend a ton of money.
posted by Post-it Goat at 5:59 PM on May 12

Also, if you have a dehumidifier and an open fish tank, I imagine they will cancel each other out, to some extent. As you reduce the humidity with the dehumidifier, more of the water from the fish tank will evaporate.
posted by chrisamiller at 6:55 PM on May 12

omfg a question i can somewhat answer, yay! okay, I work in this industry (the water damage restoration one) although I'm not a water tech - I'm just front office. But from what I've been taught:

a) mold doesn't just go away, it has to be removed. And it won't stop growing. Seriously.

b) a dehu is going to take water out of the air and we would recommend you relocate the fish tank out before we did any work in those areas. Maybe move it to a room that is completely unaffected and keep the door shut.

c) if every single bit of your apartment was heavily wet and holding water, we'd use 2 medium DH's on opposite sides of the apartment, and probably 4-5 fans to dry it out quickly to prevent mold. HOWEVER this has already happened, obviously - the mold thing.

Thus, call a professional. I'm not sure about other companies, but companies like the one I work for can only address mold if the area is less than 25 sq ft. Any bigger than that and we pass the client off to a specialist like Provident Group.
posted by damnjezebel at 7:01 PM on May 12 [1 favorite]

bigger is better
do you have AC?
posted by caddis at 8:33 PM on May 12