specialist
Mould removal and treatment
Cleaning mould from a room costs £200 to £600 as a treatment, and that figure buys the symptom rather than the cause. Around four in five domestic mould problems are condensation, which means the mould is a humidity reading made visible, and cleaning it without changing the ventilation buys a few months.
What this covers
What it costs. Mould treatment costs £200 to £600 for a room and £600 to £1,500 for several. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Cleaning surface mould from silicone, grout, walls and ceilings
- Treating the affected area rather than painting over it
- Washing and treating affected soft furnishings and curtains
- Identifying whether the cause is condensation, a leak or rising damp
- Advising on ventilation, which is what stops it coming back
What is involved
Three things cause it and they need three different answers. Condensation is by far the commonest: warm moist air meeting a cold surface, usually on a north-facing wall, behind furniture, or in a bathroom with an extractor that does not work. A leak produces mould in one defined patch that gets worse in rain. Rising damp is rare, affects ground floors only, and stops around a metre up the wall.
A cleaner can deal with the mould. Only the first of those three is a cleaning problem at all, and even then the durable fix is airflow, heating and reducing moisture at source rather than anything applied to the wall.
This matters more since Awaab's Law, which requires social landlords in England to investigate and fix reported damp and mould within fixed timescales. A tenant reporting mould should report it in writing and keep the date, because the clock runs from when the landlord was told.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask what they think is causing it before you ask what it costs. Anybody quoting to remove mould without looking at where it is and which way the wall faces is selling you a repeat visit.
Be wary of a cleaning firm that offers to paint over it. Anti-mould paint has a place as part of a fix and is not one on its own.
If it keeps returning in the same place, the next call is a damp surveyor rather than another cleaner, and a survey costs less than three treatments.
Common questions
Will bleach get rid of it?
It removes the colour from a porous surface and leaves what is under it, which is why it comes back looking worse. On non-porous surfaces like tile and glass it works properly.
Is black mould dangerous?
It is a health risk, particularly for asthma, the very young and the elderly, and that is the reason for treating it promptly rather than for panicking about a specific species.