Fwiw, most mould is caused by buildings. Poor ventilation, leaks, no waterproofing, substandard building materials.
Yes, you can avoid mould in older buildings by carefully airing out rooms and keeping things dry and away from walls. But not if the previous three tenants had a mould issue and the landlord just painted over it.
An honourable mention to fitting Cavity Wall Insulation, heavily sold and encouraged by UK government energy saving schemes thorough the 1990's and 2000's.
Except by stuffing the wall cavity, you provide a nice moisture bridge to outside whilst simultaneously stopping air circulating in the cavity and whipping away moisture; thus an explosion of mould.
The policy was a disaster, as getting the stuff removed costs a small fortune.
I think this depends on the construction of the rest of the house. A typical stack built house in the US will have extensive insulation in the exterior walls, but it's paired with a number of different layers intended to expel moisture.
As a retrofit without those things I guess I can see it being problematic.
Maybe everyone here can help me. I bought a house with an accessory addon already built, but it's walls and roof are very cheap aluminum. It's a constant source of mold. I'm at the point where I want to demolish it and rebuild properly. Some contractors I've spoken with instead encourage me to just frame out inside the existing aluminum box and get double pane windows instead. I don't think that will solve the problem though, these cheap aluminum panels are so full of mold now how would putting fresh wood over the panels solve anything, in 4 years I'll just have more mold growing over the interior frame out if I don't demolish and rebuild the whole thing with proper moisture barriers on the exterior and underside of the accessory room.
Trailer park in California. It's a prefab kit built accessory room. The main part of the trailer is normal, just this accessory room is built out of aluminum panels (about 3' x 9' per panel) and then plenty of single pane windows.
Mold growth is a moisture problem which can either be because of condensation or because of leaks. I agree with the contractors, properly framing out and insulating the interior would probably help a lot with condensation on the inside of the aluminum, as would double pane windows. Ventilation is also important for stopping mold growth.
Or it could just hide the mold behind the insulation if done poorly. In cold weather, when cavity insulation, the inner surface of the metal will be cold. If warm, humid interior air that can sneak behind the insulation and get to that surface, it will condense. And metal is impermeable to moisture, so it can’t dry to the exterior.
One technique to mitigate this that does not require extraordinary care on the part of the installer is “flash and batt”: apply a thin layer of spray foam to the exterior wall and then fill the cavity with fiberglass, mineral wool or some other fluffy insulation. The spray foam adheres to the wall and leaves no space for humid air to reach, and the inner surface of the spray foam will stay warm enough to avoid condensation.
The walls are getting below dew point when they cool and/or the humidity is too high for extended periods. And the walls have dust or other surface accumulations conducive to mold. Insulating the exterior and keeping the interior humidity low will help. Thoroughly clean and dry the interior walls, removing all mold and all other surface accumulations. Keep the interior above dew point.
Who has cavity wall insulation removed? The effect on your heating bill is going to be much worse than a small amount of mould, and I'm unconvinced that it makes it worse anyway - one of the main causes of mould in my experience is poor insulation! It makes the walls cold, which means you get condensation on them, and if you have poor ventilation in the rooms then you get mould.
If you have this problem, then the only thing I found which helps is fungicidal wash, and keeping furniture away from the problem walls (especially north facing corners of the house). I suspect wallpaper would also help but I never tried it.
Who has cavity wall insulation removed? The effect on your heating bill is going to be much worse than a small amount of mould
Some of these houses have been transformed into being unfit for human habitation due to the damp and mould. In some cases, the botched insulation has resulted in an increase in heating costs (along with the damp and mold). Some have suffered structural damage due to the botched insulation, costing tens of thousands to repair.
It's definitely true that not all apartments are equally prone to mold, but individual behavior also has a huge effect on mold. If you know that you're living in a place that's susceptible to mold, you have to take that into account when deciding how to furnish your place and how to manage humidity.
Yes, but no. We have historic, sometimes even mediaeval buildings. They weren't built with the current energy efficiency in mind.
Leaving the bathroom door open after showering. Not putting furniture flus against the wall are simple measures you could take that don't need structural adaptations.
I know there are plentiful of technical options but some common sense goes a long way.
It infuriates me to no end that we are expected to put up with building design and technology from 1900 as a consequence of the obsession with "property values must go up" (notwithstanding the property) and a healthy helping of "regulations are only ever added to, everything old is forever grandfathered".
Like, central ventilation is not magical unobtainable technology. Simple heat recovery even vastly improves heating costs in a way insulation never can.
What’s the alternative? Governments pass regulations and all buildings must be adapted within 12 months? 36 months?
What of the buildings that don’t
comply in time? Or can’t find trades to do it in time? Or we notice to our eternal shock that projects to ensure code tracking are priced at a serious premium?
Or, how many improvements to code would we decide weren’t desirable because of the costs of retrofitting, so now we lose even the low slope of improvement versus today.
This is a fairly well-trod path in economic policy circles, especially in Europe. You can either grandfather in buildings, perhaps with rules that line up with maintenance schedules anyway so that when something breaks anyway you replace it with the new standard (the HVAC world understands this well with refrigerants), or you sign yourself up for stunning, astronomical expense.
Not to mention, a lot of places around the world care about the look and character of historical locations. If a structure wasn't designed for central HVAC, for example, then there's often nowhere to hide the condenser units, air handle units or the ductwork. Same with insulation -- if that exterior wall wasn't intended to have it you've got a couple options and they both hurt.
Last of all, I'll mention labor. The type of skilled labor that can do any specific trade at all is relatively rare in the aftermath of the "college-or-bust" era, but the kind of labor you'd want for renovation work (fast, efficient, can tackle multiple different aspects at once without calling in different trades, and gets it right the first time to minimize disruption/call backs) is even more rare. To carry out some kind of massive renovation project at a national level even with infinite money you're talking about a generational timeframe just due to labor constraints.
Yeah. The last two apartments I've been in have had leaks. I begged the landlord to open up the walls and dry them out. They just painted over it, so I moved out. Sadly, that means two other people now in apartments can never figure out why their place smells musty and they feel a bit congested all the time.
>It means even if your total income for the year is low enough that your normal tax rate should be 16% or 0%, the government steps in and forces a flat 30% tax on the asset sale anyway.
From the budget:
"Recipients of means-tested income support
payments, such as the Age Pension or JobSeeker,
will be exempted from the minimum tax if they
receive any payment in the financial year in which
they realise the capital gain."
The flat rate is to stop people from dropping their income artificially and claiming the reduced rate. Most people won't run foul of this. Something like 90% of the capital gains discount was taken by the top 1%.
So your argument only applies to people who earn between 20 & 45k who don't get any government benefits (which are means tested, so they cannot be cash or asset rich), and realise a capital gain from an investment (is. not their house).
While philosophically I think it wrong that someone who earns very little cannot spread a tax liability over multiple years, the way corporations can.. I cannot think of a way that a disjoint could be given for this cohort that does not also open the door to loopholes for the 1%. Plus the number of people effected will be vanishingly small, and the amount to which that small number of purple are effected will also be small.
So, largely, contrary to what you are saying, they are not..
I honestly get that, architecture is such a time intensive degree. It is drilled into you to produce results more than to care about the process.. and to spend more time on exploration and resolution than on learning.
I do think though, that a little learning and understanding of your tools is such a useful thing practically and creatively speaking, but also ultimately time saving.
I remember being asked in class what we all thought was the message of 1984.
I was like, obviously it was about the danger of giving up your power to other people and the corruption of that power.
My classmates were pretty convinced it was about how important it was to have power over other people.
First time I twigged onto exactly how dumb, short sighted, and self interested, otherwise intelligent people can be.
Edit: I swear I remember reading something Tolkien (maybe) said about the eye of sauron being basically an analogy about the press. The eye focuses a spotlight on the thing it is looking at giving it great importance, but ignores everything else. It is not actually omnipotent, it is just propaganda and marketing.
> I swear I remember reading something Tolkien (maybe) said about the eye of sauron being basically an analogy about the press.
Hmm I'd be interested to see a citation for that. As far as I know, Tolkien maintained for his entire life that The Lord of the Rings was not in any way intended as an analogy or allegory (but he admitted that, of course, it was obviously influenced by his lived experience).
Agree, and funny also that the author shows the F91W.
It has a thriving hacker community built around it. You can get a new arm motherboard with a breakout for a sensor board. Sensorwatch have released a temperature sensor and an accelerometer.
Plus it is loud! But there is another mod I saw to make it quieter.
I also mostly use only my thumbs and index fingers, but probably only up to 60 words a minute because that is how fast (or slow) I think.
I always thought I was a touch typist because I rarely look at the keyboard. But then I got a keyboard with blank keycaps and realise how very much I rely on my peripheral vision.
I certainly don't think it has anything to do with this.
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