Some really fun work this morning. Despite the warmth I got kitted out with long sleeves, long pants, rubber gloves and respirator to clean out some moldy insulation and water-damaged moldy ceiling. It really wasn't fun, I was uncomfortably warm and sweating profusely through most of the process, and had to take my eye protection off because it fogged up so badly I couldn't see what I was doing.
Thankfully there was far less mold than I was expecting. I'd gone in prepared to deal with lots of black mold all over my ceiling joists but it turned out to be mostly confined to the very lowest parts of the cellulose insulation. I'm not even 100% sure it was black mold - it could have been mildew - but I'd rather be safe and geared up to deal with something nasty. I pulled down maybe 20 square feet of damaged drywall, a load of cellulose, found a huge number of chewed nut shells among the cellulose (the mice seem to have loved my attic while it was being built), and filled my 5-gallon separator three times clearing up the bits that fell to the floor while I was trying to pull it down in a more controlled manner.
I also found out why it gets so cold in that room during the winter. There's an air gap under the bottom of the roof for ventilation, but there's no insulation between it and the room. So the cold air can get into the hollow concrete blocks, flow down the blocks, and then blow out through any one of the gaps that were in the mortar. There was also a space above the ceiling with no insulation, meaning the cold air had next to nothing to stop it getting above the ceiling and then seeping through any small gaps into the room. I need to figure the best way to put insulation in so that the walls can still breathe in the summer but not let freezing air through in the winter. The answer will involve lots of insulation panels, and probably some fiberglass across the top in the awkward spaces.
