Moldy drip edge, staining on interior roof...help!

[Vermontyurters]

Hey, Just wanted to reply to this post, even though it has been a while!

I do not have good news to share, unfortunately. But, I do think we have learned from our second attempt to make improvements.

We moved the yurt to our own property (yay!) and were planning to live in it for a few years while we built a house. We've had to make plans for putting an addition on our "out building" (where we have all our water, bath tub, washing machine, dishwasher) just to get out of this moldy yurt faster.

We have not solved our problem, only made it worse! When we took the yurt down, we noticed that the foil

insulation

had ripped at the seams and that's why whe had so much condensation staining on our interior cover. We wanted to fix that, so we taped all the seams really well with good quality strong tape. We washed the cover and the sides and hoped that we were starting fresh.

We also put a new layer of cotton fabric on the interior walls to give a fresh look. We folded the edges over the top of the side wall fabric and used clips to keep it in place. We made a wider drip edge and painted it with waterproof paint, so that doesnt mold.

BUT. we still have mold. Even more mold than before. My thoughts are that we didn't tape the roof

insulation

to the side wall insulation to create a solid cacoon -- and now we have mold growing at the edge where the roof and ceiling meet. We think that the rips in the roofing insulation actually allowed for water to dry up when it met our dry wood stove heated interior air, which was better than teh condensation rolling down the roof and continuing to find holes where the cold air meets the warm air.

The edges around our windows are mildewy/moldy, and along the top of our walls is black moldy when you move back the cover.

I've been experiencing mold related symptoms and am worried about my health. We aren't able to move out of the yurt very quickly.

This isn't a post meaning to scare people to not get yurts, but to consider chosing the right model for your environment. I'm not sure the one we bought was the best way to go, or if all yurts have mold and I just have a sensitive body.

We are keeping our humidity inside down to 25% by using our wood stove, and running an air purifyer daily. We are hoping that this will keep the mold from moving inward, even though the harmful effects of mold are present. It's so interesting because youd never know - there's no smell, no visiable mold on the interior. You have to pull back the layers to see it.

Would love any advice. TIps or tricks. Anyone who's been here?

[Jafo]

Hmm at this point, you are probably going to need to hire a mold abatement service of some kind. This really isn't something you want to play with. You should not have this much mold. It sounds like you didn't get rid of it before, rather just patched the problem that was causing

moisture

.

When this happens to drywall, we have always just sprayed it with a bleach/water solution, but I don't know what the affect of that would be on a fabric. You absolutely have to kill the mold though, it won't just go away.

You might want to contact the manufacturer (and if they aren't any help, try some of the manufacturers here) and ask them what you could apply yourself to kill the mold but not damage the fabric. They may tell you bleach and water is fine, not sure. It could be that there is something simple there you could do and save a bit of $$.

I know I will get some push-back on this, but I am going to say it anyway: Beware of "natural" solutions to the mold issue. If someone tells you that spraying a brew of green tea, garlic and mint on this will work for example, I would just walk away. This stuff can be extremely dangerous. Consider the following:

https://www.insurancejournal.com/mag...6/18/18627.htm

The people who won that lawsuit paid dearly for it. Stachybotrys is nothing you want.

I would take care of this as soon as you possibly can.

More info:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC145304/