>A tenant was left out of pocket after a ‘no win, no fee’ solicitor persuaded them to sue Homes in Sedgemoor, which manages around 4,200 homes on behalf of Sedgemoor District Council. The tenant – whose identity has not been made public – lost the case, leaving them out of pocket as a result of high legal fees.
So what does no win, no fee mean then?
from the picture – it looks like it’s time to get the bleach out.
Most mould is caused by condensation.
So can be solved by more heating and ventilation. Which costs tenants money.
When I was in my caravan, I was getting water raining on to be one morning, but it wasn’t raining – it turned out the previous owner had unscrewed a small vent, about 10cm x 5cm, and screwed it back on with bubble wrap in it – after I undid that, virtually no more condensation in the bedroom. It was all condensation, the whole ceiling was previously getting covered in it.
So you don’t need a lot of ventilation is what I’m suggesting.
Had the worst mould years ago in a house in Southampton, landlord refused to do anything about it, I ended up in hospital multiple times because of lung infections
Good lord. Buy a dehumidifier. Buy some bleach. Move the furniture around to promote airflow. Keep the door closed after a shower. Stop asking society to wipe your ass.
I won’t speak to the article here, but to the problem itself. Damp and mold is fucking horrible in a house, but it can be kept in check with lifestyle habits. I spent a lot of time looking into this in a place I lived, as it was horrible and for anyone suffering from it can be horrible for physical and mental health, so if you’re inclined to listen I’ll speak of what I know on the topic.
I heard a lot of people say “ventilate” or “open a window” but if you don’t understand why, all you really feel like you’re doing is making yourself cold!
I’ll describe how humidity and relative humidity work because its pretty much the key to understanding the problem.
**Relative Humidity**
Air will always attempt to equalise its moisture content with other air it mingles with, however warmer air is capable of holding more water (warmer stuff expands, colder stuff contracts, the same can be said for air molecules). This is why absolute humidity or a measurement of water content in air is not helpful when it comes to tackling issues with condensation.
Relative humidity is a scale which normalises the water content of air with the temperature, in the form of a percentage (0% being no water, 100% being completely saturated and probably raining down on you).
So simply put, if air is wet – heat it up, that same air can now hold more water and will naturally rise above colder air, it will begin to suck moisture out of colder air as it mingles – which cools it too so ideally you then want to ventilate it away to a place you don’t care about, like outside.
This is why extractor fans in bathrooms and over cookers are beneficial.
**Warning Anecdote:** Before installing an extractor fan in a bathroom I observed a shower pushing a neighboring room at 50% relative humidity at 20c up by about 2-3%. Shutting the door and opening a window (or running an extractor fan) completely neutralizes this.
So imagine if you have a house of 4, all showering at least once a day, then add cooking and general human breathing/sweating (also releasing moisture), it can really rack up if you don’t ventilate out that wet air.
**The weather**
A house should be ventilated, which means it should be swapping internal air with external air, quite frequently. I think I read somewhere that the average house replaces its entire air content between 30 minutes and 1 hour. This is great when its cold outside and warm in your house, because that natural change also swaps the old air energy/warmth to the new air. That new colder air will usually have a lower water content (despite having a higher relative humidity, because its colder).
However some days, especially in a very wet spring or autumn, the air outside could be similar to indoors but wetter, which will diminish the benefits of opening a window to some extent.
**Your house**
Not every house is equal, some houses are built better than others – cavity walls and suspended floors are amazing inventions, which encourage moisture to avoid the internal house and create a cold break from the outside. A ventilated cavity may be colder than indoors, but its certainly warmer than outside and can suck up that moisture and ventilate it to the outside. People that live in these types of houses, probably don’t understand why people complain about mold.
Older houses with solid walls, non insulated concrete floors (especially tiles) are a nightmare. Disproportionally cold surfaces can radiate cold so its harder to heat a room and can be uncomfortable. If you heat the rest of the house (especially internal parts of rooms) then those sections of air can have a lower relative humidity (due to higher temperature) and begin to suck moisture from other areas it passes through, eventually that moisture ladened air hits a cold surface and you get condensation and mold. Quite commonly people in these types of places will heavily insulate the loft space and bung up ventilation in an attempt to remove those cold drafts (which can actually be radiating cold sometimes). Warmer (aka more moisture ladened) air will naturally rise and try to escape but if ventilation paths are blocked then it will sit in the room and mingle with the rest of the air, slowly collecting more and more wet air causing relative humidity to climb until it condenses on the coldest surface.
**Lofts and insulation**
Believe it or not there is such a thing as too much insulation, especially in lofts. You want to aim for about 25-30cm of wool insulation if that’s the stuff you have. Too much can block ventilation of the house and too little can cause a cold surface that water can condense on. A loft should also be ventilated if its not a habitable room (in which case that habitable room needs extra ventilation!) If your loft is wet and humid, chances are you house below will be too.
**What you can do**
The only way you can really know if you have a problem (other than black mold) is with a Hydrometer, something that can detect the level of humidity in the air around it.
I have one of these, it seems pretty accurate and its a good reference point to monitor the equilibrium of your home.
As a note, don’t just buy any one of these, check the accuracy of them in reviews. My google Nest for example always pegs the Relative humidity at about 5% higher than the stand alone one I have (which I found accurate when compared to professional tools).
Be careful not to pick up the cheapest, as a wrong reading can be cause more head ache, the first one I bought put side by side with the one I have now, showed a RH 10% higher… That will not do your anxiety any favours.
You can also get Hydrometers that have outdoor sensors which will tell you the external moisture content and compare it to indoors.
​
Also you can use the following website if you want to do some comparisons to weather reports (google shows humidity) to inside your house, if you want a ballpark. If its raining you can assume that the RH is above 90% outside 🙂
Once you have a handle on the status of your home, you can use those metrics to solve the problem.
**Things you can do/look out for:**
– Make sure vents are not blocked, they are probably there for a reason if they exist.
– Move furniture away from walls, especially cold exterior ones, to encourage air flow to keep the area a similar temperate (aka not a condensation spot).
– Fit extractor fans in bathrooms, or at the very least open a window and close the door when you shower (even on a cold day, just crack it open)
– Try to keep pan lids on when boiling, it uses less energy to heat due to the insulating properties. Just be careful with temperature so it doesn’t boil over!
– Crack a window when cooking, if you don’t have an externally venting extractor fan
– In rainy warm weather, try not to open windows unless you need to bring humidity down unless its colder outside than inside.
– Open curtains in the morning and let light in (assuming you have direct light), especially on east facing windows in the morning – use those solar gains to heat your house and its air. Same for south during the rest of the day and west facing in the evening before sunset.
– Check that your loft space is ventilated, if the roof felt is a black tar sort of stuff like a lot of older houses, you can buy LAP vents to put in between to allow air to come in and exit, put them high and low to encourage air flow, you want your loft to be pretty cold in the winter. This was an issue I found, no ventilation in the loft so there was no way to remove that humidity from the house, and it filled up (or down) with moisture. LAP vents (about 60 of them in the end) did the trick, I didn’t need to put in soffit vents.
– Insulate your ceiling, so you can keep your loft drafty without making your ceiling cold (and a condensation point, but don’t go too crazy you still want some air to escape up there and be ventilated away – 25-30 cm is about right I believe) just be sure not to compress it, as it loses efficiency. If you have a heat recovery ventilation system then you can of course insulate more, its really about the balance between air exchange and thermal resistance you want to maintain.
Our HA bungalow would be black as your hat inside if we didn’t keep on top of the mould. The bathroom and kitchen have proper extractor fans so we don’t get much there but the bedroom has two outside walls, no cavity insulation and we found terrible mould behind furniture. We got rid of the divan bed and bought a cheap metal fame bed, same with the desk, replaced it with one with an open metal frame. Moved other furniture away from outside walls and cleaned all the mould with proper mold remover. We feel much more healthy in their now.
What I don’t get is this. So we rented for two years. Black mould wouldn’t go away. Tried everything, clean it, dehumidifier open windows etc, wouldn’t go away. We were blamed for it to the cows came home wrote to my MP he refused to help.
So we move and put in a dispute. Our new flat without opening the windows etc had no mould
4 years later we get a house and no mould…
The stupid replies of ‘just get this’ are just that, stupid. If there’s mould that doesn’t go away despite doing everything then it’s a problem with the flat itself.
For fuck’s sake. As someone who dealt with mould, which was my own fault as I didn’t know not to stack stuff against the walls and let the walls breath. Mould fucking sucks. BUT if it’s not caused by tenant and they have evidence that they did everything they could to prevent it, this is bullshit. I hate that fit for habit isn’t deemed worth making legal. Why not just shit in our food supply then take 99% of our wages whist they are at it?
​
Hell, why not create a WORSHIP TORY game show where you get to have enough food for a week if you survive?
10 comments
>A tenant was left out of pocket after a ‘no win, no fee’ solicitor persuaded them to sue Homes in Sedgemoor, which manages around 4,200 homes on behalf of Sedgemoor District Council. The tenant – whose identity has not been made public – lost the case, leaving them out of pocket as a result of high legal fees.
So what does no win, no fee mean then?
from the picture – it looks like it’s time to get the bleach out.
Most mould is caused by condensation.
So can be solved by more heating and ventilation. Which costs tenants money.
When I was in my caravan, I was getting water raining on to be one morning, but it wasn’t raining – it turned out the previous owner had unscrewed a small vent, about 10cm x 5cm, and screwed it back on with bubble wrap in it – after I undid that, virtually no more condensation in the bedroom. It was all condensation, the whole ceiling was previously getting covered in it.
So you don’t need a lot of ventilation is what I’m suggesting.
Had the worst mould years ago in a house in Southampton, landlord refused to do anything about it, I ended up in hospital multiple times because of lung infections
Good lord. Buy a dehumidifier. Buy some bleach. Move the furniture around to promote airflow. Keep the door closed after a shower. Stop asking society to wipe your ass.
I won’t speak to the article here, but to the problem itself. Damp and mold is fucking horrible in a house, but it can be kept in check with lifestyle habits. I spent a lot of time looking into this in a place I lived, as it was horrible and for anyone suffering from it can be horrible for physical and mental health, so if you’re inclined to listen I’ll speak of what I know on the topic.
I heard a lot of people say “ventilate” or “open a window” but if you don’t understand why, all you really feel like you’re doing is making yourself cold!
I’ll describe how humidity and relative humidity work because its pretty much the key to understanding the problem.
**Relative Humidity**
Air will always attempt to equalise its moisture content with other air it mingles with, however warmer air is capable of holding more water (warmer stuff expands, colder stuff contracts, the same can be said for air molecules). This is why absolute humidity or a measurement of water content in air is not helpful when it comes to tackling issues with condensation.
Relative humidity is a scale which normalises the water content of air with the temperature, in the form of a percentage (0% being no water, 100% being completely saturated and probably raining down on you).
So simply put, if air is wet – heat it up, that same air can now hold more water and will naturally rise above colder air, it will begin to suck moisture out of colder air as it mingles – which cools it too so ideally you then want to ventilate it away to a place you don’t care about, like outside.
This is why extractor fans in bathrooms and over cookers are beneficial.
**Warning Anecdote:** Before installing an extractor fan in a bathroom I observed a shower pushing a neighboring room at 50% relative humidity at 20c up by about 2-3%. Shutting the door and opening a window (or running an extractor fan) completely neutralizes this.
So imagine if you have a house of 4, all showering at least once a day, then add cooking and general human breathing/sweating (also releasing moisture), it can really rack up if you don’t ventilate out that wet air.
**The weather**
A house should be ventilated, which means it should be swapping internal air with external air, quite frequently. I think I read somewhere that the average house replaces its entire air content between 30 minutes and 1 hour. This is great when its cold outside and warm in your house, because that natural change also swaps the old air energy/warmth to the new air. That new colder air will usually have a lower water content (despite having a higher relative humidity, because its colder).
However some days, especially in a very wet spring or autumn, the air outside could be similar to indoors but wetter, which will diminish the benefits of opening a window to some extent.
**Your house**
Not every house is equal, some houses are built better than others – cavity walls and suspended floors are amazing inventions, which encourage moisture to avoid the internal house and create a cold break from the outside. A ventilated cavity may be colder than indoors, but its certainly warmer than outside and can suck up that moisture and ventilate it to the outside. People that live in these types of houses, probably don’t understand why people complain about mold.
Older houses with solid walls, non insulated concrete floors (especially tiles) are a nightmare. Disproportionally cold surfaces can radiate cold so its harder to heat a room and can be uncomfortable. If you heat the rest of the house (especially internal parts of rooms) then those sections of air can have a lower relative humidity (due to higher temperature) and begin to suck moisture from other areas it passes through, eventually that moisture ladened air hits a cold surface and you get condensation and mold. Quite commonly people in these types of places will heavily insulate the loft space and bung up ventilation in an attempt to remove those cold drafts (which can actually be radiating cold sometimes). Warmer (aka more moisture ladened) air will naturally rise and try to escape but if ventilation paths are blocked then it will sit in the room and mingle with the rest of the air, slowly collecting more and more wet air causing relative humidity to climb until it condenses on the coldest surface.
**Lofts and insulation**
Believe it or not there is such a thing as too much insulation, especially in lofts. You want to aim for about 25-30cm of wool insulation if that’s the stuff you have. Too much can block ventilation of the house and too little can cause a cold surface that water can condense on. A loft should also be ventilated if its not a habitable room (in which case that habitable room needs extra ventilation!) If your loft is wet and humid, chances are you house below will be too.
**What you can do**
The only way you can really know if you have a problem (other than black mold) is with a Hydrometer, something that can detect the level of humidity in the air around it.
I have one of these, it seems pretty accurate and its a good reference point to monitor the equilibrium of your home.
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/ThermoPro-TP50-Digital-Thermometer-Temperature/dp/B01H1R0K68](https://www.amazon.co.uk/ThermoPro-TP50-Digital-Thermometer-Temperature/dp/B01H1R0K68)
As a note, don’t just buy any one of these, check the accuracy of them in reviews. My google Nest for example always pegs the Relative humidity at about 5% higher than the stand alone one I have (which I found accurate when compared to professional tools).
Be careful not to pick up the cheapest, as a wrong reading can be cause more head ache, the first one I bought put side by side with the one I have now, showed a RH 10% higher… That will not do your anxiety any favours.
You can also get Hydrometers that have outdoor sensors which will tell you the external moisture content and compare it to indoors.
​
Also you can use the following website if you want to do some comparisons to weather reports (google shows humidity) to inside your house, if you want a ballpark. If its raining you can assume that the RH is above 90% outside 🙂
[https://www.lenntech.com/calculators/humidity/relative-humidity.htm](https://www.lenntech.com/calculators/humidity/relative-humidity.htm)
[https://www.google.com/search?q=google+weather](https://www.google.com/search?q=google+weather)
Once you have a handle on the status of your home, you can use those metrics to solve the problem.
**Things you can do/look out for:**
– Make sure vents are not blocked, they are probably there for a reason if they exist.
– Move furniture away from walls, especially cold exterior ones, to encourage air flow to keep the area a similar temperate (aka not a condensation spot).
– Fit extractor fans in bathrooms, or at the very least open a window and close the door when you shower (even on a cold day, just crack it open)
– Try to keep pan lids on when boiling, it uses less energy to heat due to the insulating properties. Just be careful with temperature so it doesn’t boil over!
– Crack a window when cooking, if you don’t have an externally venting extractor fan
– In rainy warm weather, try not to open windows unless you need to bring humidity down unless its colder outside than inside.
– Open curtains in the morning and let light in (assuming you have direct light), especially on east facing windows in the morning – use those solar gains to heat your house and its air. Same for south during the rest of the day and west facing in the evening before sunset.
– Check that your loft space is ventilated, if the roof felt is a black tar sort of stuff like a lot of older houses, you can buy LAP vents to put in between to allow air to come in and exit, put them high and low to encourage air flow, you want your loft to be pretty cold in the winter. This was an issue I found, no ventilation in the loft so there was no way to remove that humidity from the house, and it filled up (or down) with moisture. LAP vents (about 60 of them in the end) did the trick, I didn’t need to put in soffit vents.
– Insulate your ceiling, so you can keep your loft drafty without making your ceiling cold (and a condensation point, but don’t go too crazy you still want some air to escape up there and be ventilated away – 25-30 cm is about right I believe) just be sure not to compress it, as it loses efficiency. If you have a heat recovery ventilation system then you can of course insulate more, its really about the balance between air exchange and thermal resistance you want to maintain.
Our HA bungalow would be black as your hat inside if we didn’t keep on top of the mould. The bathroom and kitchen have proper extractor fans so we don’t get much there but the bedroom has two outside walls, no cavity insulation and we found terrible mould behind furniture. We got rid of the divan bed and bought a cheap metal fame bed, same with the desk, replaced it with one with an open metal frame. Moved other furniture away from outside walls and cleaned all the mould with proper mold remover. We feel much more healthy in their now.
What I don’t get is this. So we rented for two years. Black mould wouldn’t go away. Tried everything, clean it, dehumidifier open windows etc, wouldn’t go away. We were blamed for it to the cows came home wrote to my MP he refused to help.
So we move and put in a dispute. Our new flat without opening the windows etc had no mould
4 years later we get a house and no mould…
The stupid replies of ‘just get this’ are just that, stupid. If there’s mould that doesn’t go away despite doing everything then it’s a problem with the flat itself.
For fuck’s sake. As someone who dealt with mould, which was my own fault as I didn’t know not to stack stuff against the walls and let the walls breath. Mould fucking sucks. BUT if it’s not caused by tenant and they have evidence that they did everything they could to prevent it, this is bullshit. I hate that fit for habit isn’t deemed worth making legal. Why not just shit in our food supply then take 99% of our wages whist they are at it?
​
Hell, why not create a WORSHIP TORY game show where you get to have enough food for a week if you survive?