How To Get Rid Of Crawl Space Mold
Crawl spaces are fertile breeding grounds for mold. If you haven’t taken steps to ensure that your crawl space is moisture free, then there is a good chance that your crawl space, may have a mold infestation. Thankfully, mold is relatively easy to get rid of if you know what you’re doing. But it should be noted, that if there is a lot of mold, then it is better to just call a licensed professional to deal with the mold problem. But if there is only a moderate amount of mold, you can deal with it yourself.
Get all the necessary equipment
The first thing to do is to gather all the equipment you are going to need to get rid of the mold. Make sure you have proper clothing; when cleaning mold you want to make sure you have clothing that covers your entire body (overalls are a good example). You also want to make sure you have eye protection, and that the crawl space is well ventilated, to prevent you from breathing in large amounts of mold spores. Finally, make sure you have all the tools you need to actually get rid of the mold (a scrubber, a mold removing solution, a soda blaster, etc.).
Find the source of the mold infestation
Your next step is going to be finding the source of the mold. Mold doesn’t just grow on its own, there has to be a way for moisture to be getting into your crawl space. So it is important that you identify the source of the moisture. There are a lot of possibilities (it could be a leaky pipe, improper ventilation, etc.), so make sure you do a thorough check of your crawl space. Before dealing with the mold, you need to deal with the moisture. A common method is to use a dehumidifier to dry out the crawl space, then moving in to deal with the mold.
Dealing with the mold
Once you have gotten the moisture dealt with, you can move onto actually removing the mold. The traditional method is to use a mold killing solution, such as bleach, to remove the mold. What you do is spray the solution on the moldy surfaces, let the solution seep in for a couple hours, and then proceed to manually scrub the mold away (make sure to regularly wash your scrubber, this prevents the mold from being spread around). This is of course extremely tedious, but it does work quite well.
Another possible method is to use abrasive blasting to remove mold. Abrasive blasting requires a specialized machine, which blasts things like dry ice particles against the mold infected areas. It is a bit harder and more expensive than the traditional method of mold removal. But the upside to this method is that removes mold quicker and more effectively. Also, abrasive blasting is able to get rid of mold in areas that would be hard to reach with a scrubber (like corners).
