Well, here we are… moving AGAIN barely half a year after we got here… this time we have a great house, wonderful landlord, but we are having to evacuate because the house is infested with mold.

Back when we moved in, we noticed a mildew smell in our living room coat closet but assumed it was because the house sat empty for so long, that it was just musty from being vacant. We cannot use the closet at all, it makes our coats and anything else we put in there smell terrible. We’ve tried Febreeze, Lysol spray, Damp-Rid but nothing helped. We can’t see any signs of water damage in there or any obvious dampness but there has to be some source of moisture, we would think, or the smell wouldn’t keep coming back.

The other thing is the paneling, particularly in the smaller bedroom. It had white stuff growing on it in the black grooves between the planks that we’ve tried wiping off with lemon oil, Windex, Clorox cleanup, etc. and it just comes back. Joy had some sweaters in a sweater box in that room under the bed and they got so mildewy smelling after just a month or so (did I mention they were in a covered plastic box, which is how they have been stored for years) that she can’t get the smell out and contemplated throwing them away. We thought for sure it would clear up by winter, with the heat on and the humidity level down but a few weeks ago we moved a bookcase away from the wall and there was a nightmare behind it. We scrubbed it down with Clorox cleanup and it is already coming back. Anything that is up against a wall has ‘cooties’ behind it — even the couch, which we had in the middle of the room then moved against a wall around Christmas — already there is heavy growth on the wall behind it. We ran a culture of the stuff and it came back as ‘Cladosporium species.’

My asthma has been terrible (I’ve even had to go to a doctor and get nebulized/put on steroids) since we moved and I am not sure if it is just something in the area or the stuff on the walls. Every household member has had ringworm at least once — some of us more than that, and I am not sure if that is connected. Lindsy and Simon had such spectacular outbreaks that we thought a chemical burn or cancer — actually had Lindsy anesthetized and biopsied. I am not talking about your typical ringworm, what I mean is sudden, large, necrotized lesions with lots of pus. We did culture microsporum canis from Lindsy but I suspect multiple fungi were involved for it to be so fast and so bad. Supposedly cladosporium can be involved in lesions but it needs to culture about 3-4 weeks and they only ran Lindsy’s for 10 days or less, just until the m.canis grew.

I did some research on Cladosporium and found that this is not considered a dangerous mold (it’s actually leaf mold, common outdoors) at least in that it does not produce mycotoxins. But it is a big problem for individuals allergic to it, particularly when asthma is involved. It produces spores like crazy and it is still a problem from an allergen standpoint even if it is dead. And it has been implicated in lesions, and more serious lung conditions such as emphysema. So it’s not on the same risk level as ‘black mold’ but it still is not a good thing to be living with it growing on every surface…

Simon is coughing, like Nipsy’s asthma cough — he’s always had his cyclic sneezy thing but has never coughed before. Winter is coughing. Cricket has bronchial issues and is on heart meds and aminophilline; breathing spores can’t be a good thing for her either. Olive’s had to be locked in the room with the worst of the mold (for ‘anger management’ issues, another long story) and her chronic hives and lesions are much worse. Lindsy is on Ketoconazole for 2 months for her ‘flesh-eating ringworm’. I’ve felt worse and worse the longer we’ve been here and have no health insurance. Zyrtec helps but it’s $85 a month plus what the inhalers are costing.

The landlord brought in several different inspectors and the issue appears to be caused by a poorly installed ventilation system and the concrete slab the house is on not having been properly conditioned and sealed. The furnace, and ductwork have to be completely redone and probably the paneling and carpet the mold is on will need to be trashed. It’s ruined a bunch of our books, several pieces of furniture and some other stuff of ours and apparently my renters insurance is NOT going to cover it, so that sucks. Not sure what we are going to do with the contaminated stuff, we can’t afford to replace it but if we bring it to the new place we risk bringing the problem with us.

Obviously, we can’t stay in the house — the landlord released us from our year lease. We’d hoped she’d have another unit we could transfer to but she didn’t, so the past few weeks have been spent frantically searching for a new place. We finally found one and will hopefully be moved in by this time next week. I’ll try and post some pics soon… we got a great 1/4 acre fenced yard but are having to squeeze into an even smaller house, and this time with no garage for storage. On the up side, though, it’s in West Asheville which is where we wanted to be, it’s all hardwood and tile (good for lungs!) and We’ll even have a brand new stove, thus hopefully escaping our ‘bad stove curse’.

I really, really, really, REALLY hope this is the last move for a very long time.