Mold in the AC unit.

[cmill78]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Ohio

We have lived at our current location since September, 2004. We live on the bottom floor in an apartment building where the bottom floor is half in the ground. About 5 years ago (2010? 2011?) during a torrential downpour, a pump broke (that they refuse to admit even after a maintenance man shouted it during the flood) and the 4 ground floor apartments were flooded with about ankle deep water. The building manager was good enough to bring people in to work into the early morning hours to dry up most of the water and facilitate with the rest of the clean up. However, about a year later we started to notice a change in the climate in our apartment when it is all closed up. soon after we noticed mold growing on the walls in the room that flooded the worst. We let the building manager know and they came down and only sprayed sealant on the affected areas instead of first cleaning it up. We were disappointed but knew little about what the protocol was. We still deal with mold and mildew but we actively fight it and have even asked for new carpeting when we discovered that it smells of mildew in small areas (which we were denied).

The new issue we are dealing with now is that our wall AC unit has mold in it. We bought a home mold testing kit and followed the directions on how to use it. 48hours later, mold was growing on the dish. I contacted the building manager and showed her the dish and told her what I did and she was speechless but still hesitant to commit to giving us new anything. Recently we were told the owner of the building would rather they pull the unit and clean it and put it back in. Normally, if done right, I probably wouldn't mind this avenue, but the unit is over 10 years old and isn't that good at cooling the apartment down as is. What should I do?

 

[Gail in Georgia]

Quite honestly, there really isn't anything you can do except, perhaps, ask management to clean the unit. Which they have agreed to do.

Home mold testing kits are useless. Mold is everywhere. Whatever you put on these kits will grow mold. It's a bit like the microbiology class I took in college where we grew interesting things on Lysol and other cleaning agents that advertise they kill "germs"

In addition, a good cleaning may very likely help the unit cool better.

Gail

 

[xylene]

Landlord's often have things backwards when it comes to long tenured tenants, instead of being rewarded, you are treated shabbily and the apartment is not kept up, like you are expereincing - HVAC issues, shoddy remediations...

The only solution is to defect and move. You can do better than a half basement apartment.

 

[OK-LL]

Let them clean the AC and, rather than pursuing a new AC, ask for a dehumidifier (or buy one yourself). This will stop or slow the growth of mold and mildew on the inside walls and furnishings of the apartment.