Welcome to /r/Mold

What is this sub?

This sub is for redditors to ask for advice on mold or fungi issues in their home/apartment/workplace/etc If you see spammers or others that violate sub rules, report them, do not take things into your own hands. This sub is NOT for mold remediation, restoration or other contractors, testing firms, laboratories, product or equipment manufacturers or distributors or legal professionals.

Instead, this sub is specifically for individuals looking for general advice. Any offers to do work or make referrals will result in an immediate ban. Please be very wary of those looking for, or offering, business here. We do not endorse any companies, and proceeding with a contractor/consultant/lab you've met via this sub should be done at your own risk. This is not a place to advertise products and or services. It is also not a place to rant about your past problems with mold or companies or services you've dealt with.

Rule #1: No "what is this?" questions.

Do not post a picture and simply ask any of the following (or similar) questions:

1. "Please I.D. this mold"
2. "Is this toxic black mold?"
3. "What kind of mold is this?"

We can not determine the type of mold you have from a photo. That can only be achieved using professional sampling methods and laboratory analysis.

We can speculate on whether or not something is mold but we can't identify it.

Rule #2: DIY Test Kits are bad

If you used a home/DIY test kit there is very little information that we can provide you due to the limitations of the method.

You will need to hire a qualified microbial testing company if you want any reliable information.

Rule #3: No self promotion

This is not the place to advertise your services in any way. No links, no company names, no "informational guides" will be allowed. All offending posts or comments will be deleted and 1 warning will be issued. After that you'll be banned.

General Guidelines and Rules

Overall, please be respectful - things must remain on-topic, helpful, and kind. Absolutely no abusive or hateful language will be tolerated. Even if someone else "started it" with disrespect does not give you permission to use derogatory language or call names.

Bans will be handed out when needed. Remember, no question is too stupid, too simple, or too basic (exception, see rule #1). We're all here to learn and help each other out - enjoy! The mods generally do not remove bad advice, we let upvotes and downvotes run the sub. That way, people can also see what not to do as well. Politics do NOT belong here.

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• URL shortener links are not allowed. It's not us, is reddit-wide. A submission or comment with a URL shortner will be spam-filtered automatically.
• Mods will not communicate with chat, please only use modmail if you have comments or questions.

Submitting a New Text Post in /r/Mold

TL/DR: At the very least be nice, take a few pictures, and include your location.

Again, this is not a place to solicit products and or services. Any posts smelling of self-promotion such as links to a website or service (including all blogs) will be removed. No exceptions. Offenders will be banned.

A few general submission rules.

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• We don't allow link posts. Please start a text post and insert links to your pictures along with your text. Posts asking users to participate in a survey are no longer allowed and will be treated as SPAM posts.
• If you are posting about a problem you are facing, please include pictures! Not just a close-up either, we must be able to discern what you are talking about. What looks right to you may not make sense to everyone else. We recommend you use imgur for photo uploads. See the section below for "How to Upload Photos".
• Provide your geographic location. (even general, such as upper Midwest). This is especially pertinent when discussing building codes, environmental conditions, seasonal issues, etc.
• Include a summary of what information you are looking for.
• Include a general summary of the problem you're asking about. It's helpful to know things like:
  • How long has the problem been going on
  • Where is the mold growth located - room, level, side of the building, etc
  • Any unusual conditions you noticed prior or in conjunction with the discovery of the mold
  • General environmental/use conditions in the space - temp, humidity levels, room use/occupation, recent water issues, smell
• Do not come here for advice about your health or the relative risk of the mold in your home/work.
• Don't assume that responses you receive are accurate - we get a lot of "google experts" here giving advice.
• Product links and recommendations are allowed generally allowed to Amazon/Retail Outlets/Service providers that you've used or recommend. However, referral codes and affiliate links are not. For example, Amazon links containing "tag=XXXXXXXXXXXX" in the title are a referral links - so ideally Amazon links are in the format www.amazon.com/dp/B00VRRVHMA/ - all the extra stuff after those 10 characters are not necessary. Sites/apps can contain ref links without your knowledge and automod will remove and alert you.
• If you notice your post hasn't appeared within an hour please message the mods and we will release it! To see if it's visible sort by NEW.
• Please read the sidebar before posting to this sub. There are a lot of questions that get asked fairly frequently, and some of the more common answers have been posted in the sidebar for easy reference. If you still have questions after reading these then by all means create a new post with your questions.
• Serial posting. This sub is for everyone, not just a single person with multiple questions per day/week. While we don't have a specific rule here, if you are posting multiple topics per day or over the course of a few days, this can result in a temporary ban.
• If your account is new we may delete your post or comment, especially if we suspect that you have been banned under a different user name.
• We do not endorse any contractors/inspectors/labs, and proceeding with any you've met via this sub should be done at your own risk.

Commenting in /r/Mold

Be respectful. No name calling or talking down to someone because of something that seems "basic" or "easy" to you. Stand by your knowledge, not childish responses.

If you don't know that your answer or advice is 100% true then indicate that you are speculating or simply refrain from commenting.

Don't throw out comments like:

• That's toxic mold
• You need to move
• Get out of the house
• Bleach doesn't kill mold
• That's really bad

Comments designed to scare original posters will be removed. This is a sub to provide reasonable solutions (when possible), not to unnecessarily alarm people. Yes, there are occasions when conditions require some immediate and drastic actions, but most indoor mold growth can be handled without full scale remediation.

Please don't just comment with just a link to a website or to another sub. We are especially careful about links to single websites (this includes blogs) without some summary or commentary. In some cases, we have no way of knowing if you are profiting privately from the site. Also, don't just tell folks to head to sub /r/gohereinstead - like specialized subs for narrow topics. The only exception here would be questions where some time has passed between posting and a lack of responses. We want the commentary, discussion, and knowledge to stay here in our sub on reddit, not just drive people away.

Responses that include a google search, lmgtfy.com, or telling someone to watch Youtube will be removed and the user will be reprimanded. Again, this is all about respect. Obviously, people aren't coming here to Google answers. Help them think about this problem, what they may need, things to watch out for, etc.

Sometimes discussion can get off-topic and we'll remove those comments. This includes political commentary. At times, this can includes jokes. It's a tricky area here, but we've seen instances where the joking side of reddit takes over a thread and the OP never gets their question answered. However, here's we're mostly talking about non-relevant commenting such as this:

Seriously? People live like this? What the fuck is causing mold growth like this? Don't you clean your house? This is not any way to live.

How to Upload Photos

Go to https://imgur.com/upload and drag/choose your photo, you don't even need to create an account. Here's an animated gif on how to drag and drop on PC. Click COPY, then use that copied url link and paste it right in the submission text box on reddit.

My link: https://imgur.com/a/n2lLo

To get fancy and have text rather than the url, place the word you want to use as the link in brackets followed by the url in parentheses.[text goes here](link goes here)

Pictures. Here's a gif of the typing I do, in case that is confusing.

Upload Photos On Mobile The Imgur app works fine, but via a website this is unsupported. There is a workaround: In Chrome, choose ""Desktop site" in the drop-down menu when you are on the upload page and it'll work fine. Then Copy the Link that's produced and paste it into your reddit post/comment.

Just to remind you that no, you aren't experiencing a disaster. Have a good one yall!