"Ruin has come to our family"

Good Afternoon fellow cultivators.
This is going to mainly pertain to unfinished basements as finished basements should have lots of this stuff rectified already.
I posted in the GD thread that I had ended up in the ER for a period due to something and my basement had a monotub or two go fucky-wucky prior to this. I use Pasty monotubs and I was using them WITHOUT filtration on the holes. This was going extremely well until the mold spore load became too high because I was unable to deal with it. The basement rides 80-85% RH normally so you can imagine it's just a problem waiting to happen.
You can imagine 40+ monotubs all contaminated..
This is how I dealt with it and hopefully the information helps you as well.
First, high RH in the room isn't super important as the monotubs tend to themselves for the most part so it's extremely important that you get it down so mold spore does not flourish and will hopefully go dormant in places you miss cleaning. The RH in your growing space, not the RH in your tubs, leave the tubs alone and tend to them as you need. No room in your house should have high humidity.
This problem MUST be dealt with as anything grown in there has an extremely high chance of contamination and due to the stack effect in a home the contaminates (Trich as I read is fairly heavy but can rise if attached to a dust particle) will spread everywhere.
Gear.
- Dehumidifier sized to your room or basement.
- Concrete sealant if you have an unfinished basement.
- Cheap rollers, long paint roller handle.
- Paint texture applicator (For popcorn ceiling) to spray sealant easy.
- Concrete sealer like Drylok.
- Gallons upon gallons of Concrobium or other similar fungistat/fungicide
- Mold Fogger. Rent one from Home Depot.
- 1 gallon pump sprayer.
- A box fan.
- Push broom, mop, copious amounts of huge garbage bags.
- A large garbage can.
NO bleach. Bleach breaks down, bleach breaks down into mold food. Use a proper fungicide.
Safety and your health.
- A P100 respirator mask, P95, 095, N95 etc will NOT be enough if things are severe... trust me, ask me about my first time attempting this.
- Polypropylene disposable coveralls.
- Goggles.
- Duct tape.
- Heavy vinyl gloves.
- A non-drowsy 24 hour antihistamine, if you have others in the house give them one too. Spores will make it all over, take one.
- Any sort of bronchiodialtor like ephedrine or salbutamol if you got an inhaler. Just in case.
"The task ahead is terrible and weakness cannot be tolerated."
Suit up, strip down to your boxers. Don your gloves, go barefoot. Put your suits hood up and duct-tape your sleeves to your gloves to avoid spores getting in. I don't know about you but airborne spores turned my skin red and itchy as fuck.
By all means you could probably do this with a 0.3 micron 100% mask and normal clothing but why risk your shit?
So I start by pumping the shit out of my sprayer full of Concrobium and putting the finest mist tit on the wand. I opened the basement door and began my descent. Spraying a cloud of fungicide in front and underneath me. Then I walk around the basement popping lids of monotubs and spraying a cloud to settle all over everything around me. You want this place soaking. Bring all of your equipment down with you. Take the dehumidifier and wrap it in a garbage bag, seal it.
I then crack the biggest window and put the box fan in blowing out, there are situation where you DO NOT want to do this for long and I'll explain near the end during a prevention tip.
Then begins the task of bagging up the most horrible substrates you've ever seen. Molds of all colors but mostly trichoderma. Again a 100% rated respirator is needed here as some of these things are toxic. Bag your substrate and pile the bags, spray em with fungicide until you can remove them. Hose down lids, spray tubs with a mist and place them on their side. If you've got exposed floor joists for your main floor it's time to hit them with it as well, avoid electrical sockets and such. If you've got copper pipe now's a good time to affix slip on insulation as insurance against burst pipes in the winter and it'll help with heating bills a bit. It adds up man.
Sweep up anything on the floor, hose it all down with concrobium and mop it up. Dispose of everything you have down there. Paper towels, cardboard doesn't matter if it absorbs moisture get it gone because it's probably coated in spore. Make sure you hose all your empty monotubs down and let them dry. Once everything is all dry bring em to a utility sink in your laundry room or your bathtub to clean the FUCK out of them with a good soap that has anti-fungal properties like Simple Green.
If you have a truck or utility trailer load it up with your bags and bring them to a public landfill that has a compactor to drop off in. Be careful, exercise proper secrecy and all that. If you feel it's too risky just bring the load out to the country and find an old unused road to empty the bags into the ditch. Don't leave the bags, that will make you an asshole. Bag all your used bags and throw them in a dumpster.
Turn off all the lights in the basement, turn off all fans and close it up the best you can. Load up the mold fogger with fungicide/fungistat. Use the directions properly and fire it up. Head out and do something for the day, bag your suit and gear. Toss it out.
"Back to the pit!"
When the fogger has done its thing it's time to rectify some issues. If you don't this was done for nothing.
First, turn on your dehumidifier. Get humidity down below 50%. Hopefully you bought a unit that has a drain hose/drain pump. Drain this into your sump pit if you have one if you don't well you'll need to figure something out. If your dehumidifier just has a bucket to empty then you have a new daily/twice daily task.
Three things to consider.
A dehumidifier can raise the room temperature by anywhere from 1-5 degrees. Account and plan for this.
If your home has a relatively new HVAC system consider installing a whole home dehumidifier which is really nice to have.
Concrete is porous and will allow moisture to seep through so your dehumidifier will run a LOT more than it needs to without fixing this.
Once it's nice and dry down there it's time to slam jam.
Crack a five gallon bucket of Drylok or other similar concrete sealer. If someone painted your slab with just straight paint and it's flaking off you got another job.. that shit has to go, you NEED to penetrate the slab with this shit. It would be nice if every basement had a properly exterior sealed and insulated slab and walls with a perimeter drainage system but thems the breaks.
Begin by hosing down the walls with your sealant, thick. You want a thick coat, you're gonna have overspray and you'll be refilling your texture gun often.
Next on your nice clean slab floor get our your nasty nap roller and try not to paint yourself into a corner. Roll this on thick, nice and thick. After it all dries you can coat the floor in epoxy to make things real nice for cleaning up as well.
Now crack that window and put the box fan in again, we're not doing this often and the reason is negative pressure in a basement is bad news. If you have a draft vent gas water heater or any other gas appliances in your home it will suck CO2 down into your basement and keep it in the home. This is bad. It will also fuck with your furnace, also bad. When everything is dry and cured and humidity is under control it's time to plan for the future.
Stagnating moist air is a recipe for disaster so we need a way to cycle the air in the basement and keep it dry. If you've got no growing on feel free to call in an HVAC guy for this and tell him you want to use your unfinished basement or otherwise as storage. They'll help you if they're not shit.
Remember climates and HVAC systems in houses can differ. Don't fuck this part up and only do it if you're sure you have no other better option.
For me I wanted to achieve slight, very slight positive pressure in the basement as not to upset the house air envelope and suck in cool air during the winter and raise my heating bills. I did not want to increase negative pressure upstairs which would cause this. A balance is needed but slightly on the negative side isn't going to kill you.
For me, since a whole home dehumidifier was not in the cards, neither was an air exchanger like an ERV/HRV I opted for input and output. On both sides of the basement I used a masonry hole saw and a hammer drill to give me 4" holes to the outside. From these holes I installed and foamed in dryer exhaust vents with backdraft preventers (To stop winter air from blowing in) I then used an elbow and a length of duct to bring it down to floor level. These would exhaust any humid air that sunk to the floor. To these you'll want to use a low powered speed controlled inline fan that has enough static pressure to move air through the duct and exhaust it. Duct boosters probably won't work for you.
Depending on your climate it might be a horrific idea to use outside air as some climates like mine can achieve high temperatures with insane RH, you could push your humidifier beyond what it's capable of and those bastards can use a ton of electricity. The air within the rest of the house is relatively low RH and comfortable room temperature so I opted to use that.
The stairwell to my basement thankfully runs dead nuts center to the house on the main floor and is against a wall that runs right through the middle of the living room. I did some quick and dirty work to install a bathroom exhaust fan on the wall itself which has multiple speed settings and is quiet. The exhaust runs down to a 8" diffuser right over the middle of the basement.
Now here comes the reason for speed control. You're going to want to try to balance input and output and it's necessary to have either a nice fat lit cigar or a proper smoker bulb for this. Run the fans on input and exhaust and close your basement door. Apply smoke to the bottom of the door and watch it. Is it being sucked down? Is it being blown out? Is it just sitting still?
If it's being sucked down you need to slow your exhaust. If it's being blown away you should try to slow your intake, get it so it barely, barely pushes your smoke away from the door. Now do the same on the other side. This will give you an idea of dialing in these fans. Again, I only did it this way because it's an older home with a bad HVAC setup. You can also check around where your joists meet the wall in the basement and seal those then try again.
You're not done yet, that's your first setting. Mark your dials or whatever you're using for the speeds they're on.
Now for winter season your furnace might upset this balance, doubly so when the hot water heater is going. Turn on your hot taps and start that hot water heater firing, turn your furnace on as well. Repeat fucking with the controls until you have your winter setting.
If you want to skip all this bullshit just throw everything on a timer and run the system balls out for enough to cycle the basement twice a day and be done with it. I over complicate things because of adderall.
In the summer your dehumidifier might run more, the winter should be nice and dry. A sealed basement is a happy basement and keeping things dry is important as fuck.
Going forward after doing all this bullshit ensure your spawn is always clean. Spawn nothing questionable, use substrate as soon as you make it and don't take a dice roll on storing unused stuff. Keep micropore on your monotub holes to limit contamination spread and if a monotub goes shitty just pitch it right away and don't be lazy or wait for a shitty flush. You went through all this shit to clean things and provide a less hospitable environment for mold, don't screw it up.
Enjoy and I hope anyone found this helpful.
"Be wary - triumphant pride precipitates a dizzying fall..."