A while back my elderly mother turned her toes up leaving me and my sister the unenviable challenge of clearing the house. Little progress has been made mainly due to neither of us living within 400 miles of the place and both having families and jobs of our own.
This evening my sister called to tell me that there is black mould on the ceiling in one corner of the utility room. It wasn't a surprise to me as it happened before, perhaps five years ago. I couldn't find a leak then, painted over it, and the problem went away until now.
The roof is on what used to be the pantry/outside toilet/coal shed. It's not a house I've ever lived in but from memory, about twenty years ago the internal walls were knocked down and the space converted into a utility room and downstairs toilet. I think the space between the joists was filled with Kingspan then overboarded with plasterboard. The external roof wasn't touched. It is the original 1937 corrugated sheeting and almost certainly asbestos cement. It is also entirely covered in a thick layer of moss. Where I scraped it clear previously, the surface was sound with little erosion, wasn't flaking or cracked.
In the ideal world, I'd have the roof stripped and replaced. But that's not going to happen in the next six months.
So ....
Can anything be done to minimise any further damage, or even seal it from the outside? It's approx 3m x 2.5m and I don't intent to stand on it as I don't want to risk cracking a sheet. I'll be at the house for the last week of August, and the next chance I'll have to visit won't be before mid October. Any suggestions welcome!
This evening my sister called to tell me that there is black mould on the ceiling in one corner of the utility room. It wasn't a surprise to me as it happened before, perhaps five years ago. I couldn't find a leak then, painted over it, and the problem went away until now.
The roof is on what used to be the pantry/outside toilet/coal shed. It's not a house I've ever lived in but from memory, about twenty years ago the internal walls were knocked down and the space converted into a utility room and downstairs toilet. I think the space between the joists was filled with Kingspan then overboarded with plasterboard. The external roof wasn't touched. It is the original 1937 corrugated sheeting and almost certainly asbestos cement. It is also entirely covered in a thick layer of moss. Where I scraped it clear previously, the surface was sound with little erosion, wasn't flaking or cracked.
In the ideal world, I'd have the roof stripped and replaced. But that's not going to happen in the next six months.
So ....
Can anything be done to minimise any further damage, or even seal it from the outside? It's approx 3m x 2.5m and I don't intent to stand on it as I don't want to risk cracking a sheet. I'll be at the house for the last week of August, and the next chance I'll have to visit won't be before mid October. Any suggestions welcome!
