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Mold Growth?

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JStructsteel

Structural
Joined
Aug 22, 2002
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1,477
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What would you call this white stuff on the walls? Some sort of mold? Also, what causes a spall like this, just a bad outer coating?
Its a basement with water issues (standing water on floor). Seems they but a parge coat over the wall, now chipping off. Im thinking its a stone foundation they added a concrete layer over it.
Customer says it about 80 yo house.
20250306_155631.jpg20250306_155740.jpg
 
I hate that mold is such a 4-letter word in engineering. You can’t go wrong with “organic growth.”

I’m not sure what I’m looking at in the second photo. Delaminated parge? Dunno if I’d call it a spall. Brush it with a coarse-hair brush to expose what’s probably concrete or stone. We have stone foundation walls here, too.
 
Looks like an extreme case of efflorescence to me.
Oh, yeah. Duh. Sorry OP; got so caught up with the word mold that I didn’t even look all that closely. @phamENG has the right of it.
 
I hate that mold is such a 4-letter word in engineering. You can’t go wrong with “organic growth.”
This is a good tip. Just like saying wood destroying insects instead of termites. I'm definitely going to use this from now on.
 
Thanks. Are we Building Construction Experts now then, instead of engineers?
 
Thanks. Are we Building Construction Experts now then, instead of engineers?
To be good at the latter, you need to be the former.

Would I advertise myself as such? No. Because that does get you into a whole different realm of liability and standard of care. But to make effective use of deep knowledge, you need a broad base of knowledge to guide it.
 
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