Outside Leak Causes Mold on Inside Wall in Eatontown, NJ
Challenge
The exterior wall of an office/warehouse in Eatontown, NJ was allowing water seepage into the building for quite a while. Although the leak was fixed, the business found itself with a mold problem because of the water intrusion. Mold had started to grow on the outside bottom of drywall (sheetrock). As long as there is water or moisture, mold will start to grow on any organic material including processed materials such as drywall. Although drywall is a panel made of gypsum plaster, a mineral-based material that isn’t organic, this material is pressed between two thick sheets of paper, which is organic. Once drywall becomes saturated with water, as this business found out the hard way, it can start to grow mold.
As long as drywall has not lost its structural integrity, with our treatment process, we don’t need to remove it. We simply treat the mold where it sits. However, in this case, because the leak had come into the building from the exterior wall, we wanted to investigate what was going on behind the panel to ensure that there was no mold growth in the wall void. To do so, we cut out a two-foot section of the wall to allow us to fully inspect. Fortunately, nothing was going on behind it and we were only dealing with surface mold, which for us, is easy to treat and does not require removal of building materials.
Solution
We treated the area with an antimicrobial application called MAPS 1, which stands for Mold Abatement Polymer Solutions. MAPS 1 is an EPA registered product that attacks mold on a cellular level and immediately kills it. Next, we used our mold stain remover and scrubbed away all the mold growth throughout the crawl space.
Next, we applied our patented sealant called MAPS 2. MAPS 2 is a moisture-sensitive application that encapsulates the surface mold is growing on and renders it harmless, inert, and non-allergenic. One of the best features of MAPS 2 is that it will reactivate whenever it gets wet to prevent future mold growth. Now the mold is gone and the building is safe again for the employees to work in.
