Green Renovation — Moldy Floors Must Go!

The first floor of our new old house used to have wall to wall carpet. It was taken out shortly before we bought the house, revealing wood floors with black fuzzy lines in most areas. Those lines were mold. Apparently there was a moisture problem. It made the floors look bad and the whole house smell even worse, on top of that it’s bad for you. Thanks to my brother we got some Sodium Percarbonate and mixed it with hot water to mop the floors. It worked! See the before and after pics below.

After it worked so well in the first room I mopped I decided to try a control to make sure it was the sodium percarbonate and not just the scrubbing with hot water. Although mopping and scrubbing with plain hot water did remove some of the black mold and it didn’t do it nearly as well. Also, just using water wouldn’t actually kill the mold. In fact, it could add to the problem down in the cracks. Now, the house no longer has that musty moldy smell. But when I was mopping it was extra-double-stanky.

Unlike chlorine beach, sodium percarbonate is an environmentally safe bleaching agent that breaks down to oxygen, water and sodium carbonate or soda ash. It can be used as a laundry detergent, a deck cleaner, and in many other applications. Read more about sodium percarbonate at Wikipedia.