Log cabin mildew

[clemency]

Kind of off the wall question here, but you folks have a lot of arcane woody knowledge and may have an answer. If not, no worries. My family has a family camp on a lake in Vermont. One of the buildings is a log cabin, and there's mildew on the inside walls. We're trying to figure how to get rid of it. Anybody have any ideas? Some kind of spray? Just suck it up and start scrubbing?

Here's a gratuitous pic from the front porch of the main house. If anyone goes to the Wilderness Paddlers Gathering, we're on the next lake down (the nicer lake).

http://www.wildernesstravellers.org/Pages/Paddlers.html

 

[Guest]

Bleach will kill it if sprayed on, but you will have to scrub to remove it. Your cabin will unfortunately smell like a swimming pool. They make mildew inhibiting sprays for house siding to keep it from coming back.
Turtle

 

[yellowcanoe]

You need better circulation of air somehow. Or depending on what your inside walls are ( log, Sheetrock?) a water leak somewhere.. How is the roof? Also possible the logs were not dry to begin with

A bit of a job ahead. Bleach only takes care of the surface and is inferior to other products to get to the root of the mold Once you get rid of the mold you will have to seal each and every log.
http://choosetimber.com/mold-mildew-log-walls/

 

[clemency]

No Title

Thank you. Especially for that link. Log cabin is about 20 years old, doesn't get much use, and is subject to a lot of moisture due to siting (thanks Mom) in combination with drainage issues on the lot. Heading up in about a week, and will look into sourcing some of these products locally and figure out how to reduce moisture, particularly in the crawl space.

 

[yellowcanoe]

You have my sympathies. Algae and moss grow on the north side of my house. I am sure there would be mold except the wind always blows. We're on a hill about 30 feet above the lake.

 

[Sweetfancymoses]

I've had good luck with sprays containing sodium carbonate as the active ingredient in preventing mold from reappearing for a while.

 

[makevx73]

You might look into a product called Concrobium, http://concrobium.com

Info here, http://concrobium.com/

I used it in an attic that had mold issues due to poor ventilation. They make it in several different products now. If you have a power source, you can rent a fogger which would work well for a large area. You can get it at Home Depot or Menards along with some other places.