Mould....help

[whateverisleft]

Looking for advice/anything to help with issues of recurring mould. I'm at the end if my tether as I just seem to get it in every single room of my house. 3 bed semi detached by the sea. We don't have trickle vents in our windows but I open every window upstairs and leave on the latch all day every day, with the bathroom door kept shut too. Kids bedrooms have barely anything in them except beds, wardrobes and 1 small unit. I could smell the mould in my daughters bedroom, pulled the unit out and found it covered in mould all down the back. It's not flush to the wall and I thought quite well ventilated. I've found a coat in my wardrobe covered in mould, as well as some shoes and bags, but no mould around the outside of the wardrobe. I've tried moving all furniture away from external walls but surely it's not right to have to live with nothing ever touching a wall. It just all seems ridiculous and I'm losing furniture and belongings because of it. Downstairs we can't keep any furniture on an external wall because it gets eaten up by mould within a week or 2, and I've just found a couple of appliances in a bottom kitchen cupboard with mould on too. We have a humidity/moisture reader in the bedrooms and struggle to keep them below 70%, even having dehumidifiers on all day. Had a damp specialist visit who barely looked at anything and just said it's condensation and that we need vents in every room. I try to keep the house ventilated, love having fresh air so always open doors and windows as much as possible, but it's obviously not making a difference. We had similar issues in an old house we lived in a few years back and had an envirovent unit installed, but didn't stay there long enough to know how effective it was. Wondering whether I bite the bullet and get the unit again, or go with getting vents in every room. It's really getting me down and I just want to get it sorted so that I can walk into a room and it not smell or mould or feel like it's damp and unclean. None of the walls feel damp btw, and I've contacted someone to come and check our guttering etc. Anything I've missed/words of wisdom/advice before I put my house on the market!
Thank you if you've read this far 😊

What is the outside of your house? Render on brick?

All brick

Ugh I can't really help but wanted to commiserate as our house is similar. It's fine in the summer but the mould is a battle all winter! What do you do about heating? We have ours 'on' all the time but the thermostat set low so the house is the same temperature all the time. We found if we blasted the heating for a few hours a day then let the house cool overnight, it was worse. It hasn't actually affected our heating bills at all. We have a portable heater if we want a little extra heat in one of the rooms. Other than that we do the same as you- opening windows during the day, bathroom door shut, extractor fans etc. If you find an answer, let me know!

Thank you @LadyoftheWoods sometimes it feels like no one else has the issues but us (that we know)! Definitely the same as us then....fine all Summer and then bam, late Autumn it all starts again. We have our thermostat set at 18 all the time, often turning it up when we're home from work/school when it's a bit colder. I don't mind a colder house but with young children it's not always ideal.
Don't even get me started on our bills, I had another thread earlier this year about how much they'd gone up. This is fast becoming our 'money pit' house
I'll wait to get the guttering sorted before checking everything else and will keep you posted. I'm at my wits end so will undoubtedly end up contacting Envirovent and paying out for one of their units!

Hi @whateverisleft get a builder out to checker the pointing on the brick work, if it is OK in summer. Could be that the mortar is allowing water to seep through. I have had a similar issue. Had the house repointed and then sprayed a waterproofing treatment over the bricks where the facings had blown.

Thank you sleepdeprived - I'll add that to my list of things to do. Didn't know you could get a waterproofing treatment so that's good to know.

Cost me about £20 on amazon for the product and the sprayer and it did the whole of the kitchen offshoot of my terrace

I have just moved from a house with storage heaters where we didn’t even have to think about mould or condensation on the windows. To a house with central heating. When we moved in I saw mould on all the walls down the bottom. I have opened all the trickle vents , I open windows every morning. I have sprayed with HG mould cleaner. And I’m drying most of my washing outside luckily at the moment.

I will be watching to see how it is going over the next few months. Have struggled to sort the heating out in this place as it’s so fancy and I’m always so hot. Never thought I would say it but I miss my storage heaters where it was just a nice temperature all day and if I got cold in the evening I just popped my electric fire on.

Trickle vents would certainly be the first thing I would do. That will allow constant ventilation. Opening the windows during the day is well and good but especially in bedrooms you will get condensation at night. I would also get a couple of decent dehumidifiers, the ones designed for the British climate (ebac I think). Do you have a working extractor fan in bathroom and kitchen? Do you keep the doors closed during and after cooking/bathing? Are you drying clothes indoors? How often is your heating on?

Also do you have any house plants?

We have mould in a few areas as no ventilation. We are getting extracted fans fitted by an electrician soon that come on with humidity.

We had exactly the same issue. Changed all our windows to ones with trickle vents in and no issues since.

@welshweasel when u moved in a few weeks ago none of the trickle vents were open. So I have opened them all now. Hoping that will help

I wouldn't recommend waterproofing spray. It won't help with condensation and it could potentially trap water inside the building making the problem worse. If there is water coming in from outside you need to find and fix the cause.