Mold And Mildew

[captaingary]

I have a 2003 Fleetwood Bounder that has leaked water in at the bathroom skylight over the years. It has developed a mold or mildew smell that affects our breathing. Does anyone have a suggestion about how to track down the odor and kill the mold/mildew? The leaks have been fixed but the odor remains.

[AprilWhine]

Hubby and I lived in the Seattle area for a few years, where we had a constant battle with mold.

What worked for us, put a bleach/water solution in a spray bottle and soak the mold. Use the strongest solution you can handle, I sometimes used straight bleach if the mold was stubborn. After you kill the mold, a good airing should get rid of the smell.

[Briarhopper]

Generally mold/mildew on the surface of inorganic material can be cleaned as it doesn't eat into the material. Mold on wood, paper etc, is more difficult to deal with. The best solution is to remove the material and replace. Sometimes, thats not so easy or economical to do. If you can expose the damaged material, you may be able to kill the mold, but if not completely removed or killed, it will begin to grow again when the conditions that promote growth occur (warmth and moisture).

Bleach is great stuff, but is also harmful to organic material (including humans), so be careful if using. There are other chemicals available that remediation companies can get that are safer to use, but not sure if they can be bought over the counter anywhere. There are also paints or coatings that therorectically retard mold returning that can be used to coat affected materials after you have did your best to kill the mold.

If it is bad enough, it may be worth a call to a professional remediator. You can also find good info on mold prevention and remedaition at epa.gov. Some of the info is aimed at schools and commercial buildings, but an RV is just a small building that moves.

[RVerOnTheMove]

It sounds like you do not know where the smell is coming from so I am assuming that you cannot see any evidence of this problem. If that is correct you have a much more difficult problem ahead of you. If you can't see it you can fight it. Do you know where the leaking water ran? Can you see anything from the storage compartments looking up and around? Sorry I can't give you more but if you have looked everywhere you can see, you are going to have to get to the areas you cannot see and that might take a lot of disassembly which might include the shower stall itself.