Mold in apartment - covering clothes

Butterface

My partner and I took a 6 month lease (luckily only a short lease!) in an apartment block that was simply thrown up during the boom.

We're about a month and a half towards the end of the lease, and we have spent months getting nowhere with our landlord yet popping in over a grand each month in rent.

There are no vents in either bedroom. We try to open the windows in both bedrooms for a few hours during the day when my partner is at home.

We are in a first floor apartment, yet the damp seems to somehow also be coming up from the floor. There are gaps in the cheap wooden flooring, and damp keeps coming back on the skirting boards and bottom of the walls. It also keeps reappearing all around the windows and on the window sills.
We clean the damp with industrial strength mould cleaner nearly every fortnight. It always comes back.

We do not dry clothes in the apartment because there is no washing machine, so we use the laundrette nearby.

The worst thing is that there is mould growing on our clothes and shoes, in a very random fashion. The wardrobes are nowhere near the outside wall and the shoes are nearest the bedroom door. Only the odd pair of shoes and random items of clothing in the wardrobe appear to get mould growing on them. On top of our weekly laundrette bill we've had to do 3 separate washes of large clothing items such as jackets and duvet covers, sheets etc. We are now leaving our clean clothes in our sitting room as it seems to be okay in terms of damp.

The landlord sent a handyman around to fix heaters in the sitting room a few weeks ago and we showed him the damp. He just told us it's our fault for not opening the windows.... opening the windows for a few hours a day has not resolved this issue at all. We also cannot keep them open night and day as it's getting very cold now and we need to use our heaters to heat the place.

Last week I pulled our bed out and there was mould on the back of the headboard...

What the hell can be done to fix this issue? How can we make the landlord take some responsibility for this? We open windows and DO NOT dry clothes in the apartment... there is literally nothing we are doing wrong, yet the place is still damp.

The_Chap

http://www.moldbustersireland.com

We used this place on our apartment when tenants brought mould spores from their old house

Worth it

MicktheMan

OP,
what you are describing is the result of a combination of
1. insufficient heating
2. inappropriate ventilation
3. high moisture concentration in the internal air

All three have a building component and an behavioral component.
If you have a landlord who won't deal with the building component then, short of using a dehumidifier to artificially keep the place dry, I'd be looking for somewhere else to live.

You need a ventilation system (opening windows doesn't count) as well as a heating system capable of heating the place. If these are in place, then you need to heat the place sufficiently such that the ventilation system has a chance to work. Extract moisture at point of generation (extractor fan over cooker & shower, for example).

MicktheMan

The_Chap wrote: »

http://www.moldbustersireland.com

We used this place on our apartment when tenants brought mould spores from their old house

Worth it

Only deals with the symptoms and not the cause.
You don't "bring mould spores" with you anywhere, they're everywhere. The trick is to prevent them from germinating in your home, i.e. deprive them of moisture.

The_Chap

MicktheMan wrote: »

Only deals with the symptoms and not the cause.
You don't "bring mould spores" with you anywhere, they're everywhere. The trick is to prevent them from germinating in your home, i.e. deprive them of moisture.

In our case, the tenants told us they had a mould problem in the last place which was why they left, after 6 months in our new built apartment mould started appearing - coincidence??

MicktheMan

The_Chap wrote: »

In our case, the tenants told us they had a mould problem in the last place which was why they left, after 6 months in our new built apartment mould started appearing - coincidence??

No coincidence at all.
They had mould in their old place and yours because of behavior (blocking vents, not opening windows, not using the heating sufficiently, drying clothes on rads etc) combined with structural issues such as thermal bridges.
Any building no matter how well built can develop mould issues if the right conditions are allowed to exist for a period of time.

L1011

The_Chap wrote: »

In our case, the tenants told us they had a mould problem in the last place which was why they left, after 6 months in our new built apartment mould started appearing - coincidence??

Coincidence in so far as they didn't bring spores with them - no coincidence as above. Tenant behaviour is the #1 cause of mould and clearly they do things that induce it.

superleedsdub

Butterface wrote: »

We do not dry clothes in the apartment because there is no washing machine, so we use the laundrette nearby.

On a side note, Your landlord is legally obliged to provide the following:

Access to a washing machine
Access to a clothes-dryer if the rented unit does not have a private garden or yard

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/renting_a_home/repairs_maintenance_and_minimum_physical_standards.html

Butterface

superleedsdub wrote: »

On a side note, Your landlord is legally obliged to provide the following:

Access to a washing machine
Access to a clothes-dryer if the rented unit does not have a private garden or yard

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/renting_a_home/repairs_maintenance_and_minimum_physical_standards.html

In making my point that we don't wash/dry clothes in the apartment, I should have been clearer - there is a communal space with washing machines and dryers downstairs where you buy tokens and pay per use, but it became more convenient to drop stuff at the launderette rather than wait around hours at the weekends for free machines.

My partner spoke with the handyman again earlier today and he has now turned around and said that we are not the only tenants to complain about damp, but that the landlord will do nothing because making changes to one apartment means making changes to them all. This is the very same argument he made when I pointed out that there are gaps in the floorboards and the appearance of sort of bubbling on the wooden tiles, which definitely seems to be caused by damp. He also admitted that ours seems to be very bad.

We're probably going to move out after our lease is up (hopefully we find somewhere without a damp problem, certainly know what to look for now!), but does this mean that the landlord will simply slap some paint on the situation to cover it up and then increase the rent for the next tenant? We were already told the 2 bed apartments are being let for €100 more a month since we moved in during the summer.

Surely if private rented accommodation poses a risk to its tenants health, then there should be some agency or local authority that can be called upon to check it out? Also, how do we find out the BER of the building? This was not included in the advertisement for the place.

I'm not sure why I'm even posting about this, because I know I will move on eventually.. hopefully to somewhere better. But I can't help feel jipped by the landlord for all the rent that we've paid for this place and all the problems we've had. And I feel sorry for the next poor schmuck who thinks they're moving in to a nice place because the landlord gave it a lick of paint.:(

MicktheMan

This should answer most of your questions.

Neverbanned

Go to the prtb, that shouldn't be happening. My mate was renting a basement flat with his girlfriend very recently(phisboro) , jacks constantly backed up, main living area(ie bed, table, couch area) was obviously painted just before they signed the lease, walls started turning black within three weeks and just got worse. broke the lease and legged it.

Ring the landlord and bring up the prtb, if they get flustered or try to fob yis off, start looking elsewhere and Shaft him for two months rent (one month and yer deposit)

Sad thing is, someone else will be more than happy to take it, at the higher rent. Don't be that person.

Victor

Neverbanned wrote: »

Shaft him for two months rent (one month and yer deposit)

Advising people to break the law is not acceptable.

Do not respond to this post.

Moderator

Butterface

MicktheMan wrote: »

This should answer most of your questions.

Thanks for this. I wasn't aware inspections can be carried out by local authorities.