Hello All,

I have some mysterious orange/brown spots on my bathroom carpet that are appearing out of nowhere. They're about 1/2 an inch across and scattered randomly across the carpet and all attempts to clean them off so far have failed. Now the brown spots started appearing all over home. They started appearing on stairs, living room, other bedroom floors.

It is 15 year old home. Carpets are never changed. I want to change the carpet. But I want to figure out source brown stains before I chane the carpet so that I don't end up in same state after changing to new carpets.

Please see attached picture. Picture of Brown Spots

I need expert advise to take care this problem.

Thanks
p

Hello All,

I want clarify few things. The carpet is under the wash basin area. Bathroom has vinyl tile. Brown stains started appearing on these vinyl tiles also.

I need some urgent advise/help. Whom would I call to inspect this to find the cause ?

Thanks
p

What this appears to be is a mold stain. What level is the floor at i.e. basement, 1st floor, 2nd?
Slab or basement home?

Regardless of where its at. If its indeed mold. You need to remove the carpet find the source of the moisture correct it and then replace the stuff.

Another reason for this occurance can be a reaction to the cleaning supplies used to clean carpet. You say its happening all over the place? I would look into what your using on the carpet to freshen it up.

Do you operate AC in the home? How damp is the house inside? High moisture levels in a home can cause mold to develop quite easily.

Thanks for reply. I have lifted carpet in the Master Bedroom - near the wash basin area where I have highest number of brown spots. There is nothing under the carpet which causes this color. I don't see any water leak or mold.

How can I test whether this is mold ?

If this is finding its way all around the house then most likely its some reaction to a cleaning chemical used on the carpet. Add moisture to this mix and the end result can be a stain. The bath area being wet more often then the rest of the carpet in the house will result in more stains in the bath area.

As far as testing for mold. There are a few things you can do.

You could contact a company called Pro-Lab located in Florida. They can send you a pre-paid homeowner type of kit that you would use to check for mold. But I can tell you without even testing it, that it will come back positive for mold spores.

Or simply remove the carpet and throw it away which I thought you were planning to do anyway.

As someone who has been doing mold testing for many years. Testing for mold in many issues is a waste of hard earned money. Who cares what kind of mold you have? Unless you have a health issue or your DR, needs to know what your exposed to. The bottom line is mold does not belong on walls, floors, or ceilings.

Regardless of what kind you have. You remove it by removing the offending material that it is growing on. But once removed, then you fix the issue by correcting the only one thing you can control that causes it to grow. The water or moisture that feeds it. If you do not do this it will return. If its covering all types of things then of course special cleaning methods are called for.

Now do not get me wrong about testing. Sure this should be done if your having it professionally cleaned. You need to test to set up some sort of guidelines for proof that the cleaning worked and did not just spread the stuff around the air. Or to determine where the mold is if you cannot see it but smell funky odors that cannot be explained. But for simple mold issue on a small area of a wall, or floor spots in your case or ceiling not necessary.