LESLIE: Alright, now we’ve got Bobby. Welcome to The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
BOBBY: My wife got ready to take a suit out of the closet and it was soaking wet and we couldn’t understand it. We didn’t have any leaks or anything in the closet or anything and I don’t know where it’s coming from.
TOM: Hmm.
LESLIE: Now, you’re saying that the clothes are wet. Where are you seeing this mold? Is it on the floor, is it on the walls, is it physically on the clothing?
BOBBY: It’s around the walls. After I took all the clothes out, I saw it around the walls.
LESLIE: And is this closet on an exterior wall in your home?
BOBBY: Yeah.
LESLIE: So it’s probably – what’s happening here is that you’re getting such a difference in temperature from that exterior wall of your closet that the closet on that side is cold and then on the inside, where the room is, is warm from being heated; so now you’re getting this sort of moisture situation because you’ve got the hot and cold mixing and you’re getting condensation.
I think what you’re going to need to do, Bobby, is take all the clothes out; clean everything. Make sure you get whatever is wet; have it laundered or dry cleaned – whatever it needs to be. Then look at the walls in there. Scrub everything down, where you see that mold growing, with a bleach-and-water solution. If you’ve got carpeting in there, take it out; put down some sort of laminate floor or something in there – a vinyl floor – just to get that carpet out of there.
And then what I would do is either under-cut that closet door or add a vent into the door or get a louvered door; something. Because you need to circulate air through that closet because that is what’s causing the mold to grow is the condensation and the lack of air flow.
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
TOM: Alright, Bobby? Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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