Soda blaster

[Testarossa]

The barn has black mold in the cellar. This look like an excuse to buy a soda blaster. After the barn job is done, I'll want to use it for cleaning metal, especially aluminum.

Any recommendations from folks who have used this equipment? My air compressor claims 5HP and 10 cfm at 90psi.

[harry h]

Not sure about soda blasting but my compressor is 80gal / 18 cfm @ 100 and doesn't struggle at all.  Depends a lot on how big your tank is.  BTW, I do mold, virus and bacteria remediation for a living.  You would be better off renting dry ice blasting equipment.  The ice will kill the mold but the soda will spread it around.  Where a proper respirator (P-100) and a suit.  Might want to hire a professional to do this, you can make a real mess and make things worse.  You might have a very toxic mold but unless tested, you really don't know.  Most mold can be black in color.

[Bill Owens]

This is what my very limited experience would say. I think that your compressor PROBABLY has enough capacity depending on size and depth of penetration, humidity can have a significant effect on nozzle output so I would do the most I could to eliminate moister from the air being shot from your hose.
    Bill

[Bill Owens]

OOPS SORRY,

   I was totally thinking about blasting aluminum till I went back to beginning of thread. Was't thinking of original need of blasting mold. MY BAD.

[bmc5733946]

Seth,

Please think this through carefully. Mold can be extremely dangerous. My brother and his family were living in a motel for more than a year while their house was stripped of all drywall. A small drip at a basement faucet caused all the damage. Thank goodness they had insurance.

I would not attempt a remediation personally, I am absolutely terrified of mold and the problems it can cause.

Brian

[Rusnak_322]

the mold is in the basement of a barn, not a living space. I would spend a little $ and get it tested, there are a lot more molds that are harmless than there are that are bad for you. Color isn't a real good indicator.

As far as soda blasting motorcycles stuff, I used a 5hp 25 gal compressor and it worked really well. I had issues with humidity, and a dryer that wont kill the cfm is more then I wanted to spend.

[canuck750]

I bought a fancy pressure cylinder soda blaster from Harbour Freight, you fill the bottle with soda, the bottle cap has a siphon tube fitted to it that reaches down to the bottom of the tank, a regulator accepts your compressed air hose and a then a trigger gun dispenses the soda. It's a pain to fill the bottle and I rarely use it anymore.

What I find the best and easiest is a 5 gallon plastic pail of soda, a 3/4 hole cut in the lid and a simple Harbour Freight siphon spray gun; just a rubber hose that drops into the pail and a air chuck to the spray head and your done, the siphon gun is around $20.00.

I get my soda from an industrial supplier, 25 pound bags at a time. Only down side is the dust / mess, but soda is pretty harmless but it will kill grass / plants in concentration.

[redrider90]

I got EXTREMELY sick in 2004 from mold. I had 2 kinds that were toxic. 1. the primary source was aspergillus in the crawlspace which primary source of food (substrate in science) is wood and is a sandy white color to it.  It needs high humidity vs some other kinds of toxic mold which require very wet conditions like you see in esp. after a flood or water leak called 2. stachybotrys which is usually black to greenish black. It loves to grow on the paper covering on sheet rock and in particle board. It primarily grows outside in hay and dead grass as its substrate. In my case the stachy came from a roof leak in the upstairs bedroom. It was behind a wall and I could not see it until the sheet rock was removed. Eventually when the inside of the house was clean and I mean clean we rebuilt it with foam insulation that did not grow mold and then covered it with sheetrock that had fiberglass cover vs the paper cover. The whole inside of the house down to the studs, including wood in the crawlspace were fogged with sporicidin  and sprayed with forsite.
Stachy is more toxic and is very heavy and does not spread through the air very easily whereas most other molds both toxic and not toxic easily spread through the air after even just walking by it.
I would consider doing a tape test where you apply tape and pick the mold up and have it tested.
You should treat all mold as if it is toxic and take extreme precautions to protect yourself while cleaning the surface. Soda blasting will spread mold throughout the whole area like bomb went off it there. It will spread the spores everywhere.  It will eventually settle out to the horizontal surfaces and lay in waiting to regrow and also for you to inhale when you are in that space. It may very well get into the barn itself using a soda blaster. It is best removed by sanding then then vacuuming with a HEPA vacuum. HEPA filters are available for all shop vacs. You have to clean the whole area after cleaning the mold. After doing that you then should fog the area with a product like Sprocidin See http://www.sporicidin.com/
Fogging will penetrate the whole area, including wood and sheet rock as well as lay down on dirt killing the mold. Mold even when dead is still toxic. So after fogging you should vacuum again. Then seal the wood with something like ForSite which is a water based paint with silver in it. Mold can neither grow on it nor through it.
 Finally you need to deal with the source of moisture that is causing the mold growth. All mold species except one require high humidity or direct contact with water. Example aspergillus requires high humidity >50% and strachy requires 70% saturation or water into the substrate to grow.  In my house the crawlspace was dirt so a 10 mil thick plastic was laid down and sealed to the concrete walls. You must not allow water to intrude into the crawlspace. If your walls are wood I am not positive how to do that. But sealing the wood with ForSite is just part of the deal. What are the walls of the cellar. If it is cement then you can seal the cement to prevent water intrusion and then add sealed plastic sheeting over that. Water moves right through cement hence it requires sealing to prevent water vapor from getting inside.  When done you need to have humidity levels no greater than 50%. If you are above that then a dehumidifier that drains into the pluming or outside will do.
TAKE EXTREME CAUTION TO PROTECT YOURSELF WHEN CLEANING MOLD.
Wear a P100 + carbon HEPA respirator and full goggles was well as clothes that you take off and wash every time you enter and work in the area.
You can also buy throw away one piece garments by the box.  Do not cross contaminate your house or the upper area of the barn. Ideally if you have a window in the cellar you put an exhaust fan on high while you are working in the area. If you do not have an window then do what professionals do and set up (rent) an exhaust system in the doorway so as to apply negative pressure so you are constantly pulling air out of the area. You leave this on until you are done. 
I cannot overstate how careful you must be with working with toxic mold. Chronic and or high dose exposure can totally set off a cascade of problems as you ingest and inhale it. Mold is fat soluble and loves the brain. It goes to a place called the hypothalamic pituitary axis which is where your endocrine system works. I was misdiagnosed for 2 /12 years after I got sick before I found an expert doctor who said check your house for mold. You can also have an allergic reaction which happen to my wife a few times. The allergic reaction comes from the inflammation mold causes in the body. It is not the kind of allergy you associate with say peanuts or seafood. Mold increases C4a. C4a is a protein that is an anaphylatoxin. In seconds she turned bright red, itching with hives, huge tongue and hard to breath. An epi pin save her.  I learned a lot about mold, its effects on the body and on remediation. Most remediators do not know what they are doing.

[Testarossa]

Thanks for the advice on treating mold and on soda blasting.

We'll sample the mold this weekend and get it tested. We live in a pretty dry climate, at 5700 feet elevation and normally about 10% humidity. The cellar was flooded a few years ago when an irrigation ditch overflowed up the road -- the water ran over the road and through the cellar. There's a lot of mud that needs to be cleaned out, by shoveling and then pressure washing, and I'll put in a sewage pump to deal with the run-off from that.

Local expert says use the pressure washer to blast the mold off with a bleach solution. If the stuff tests nontoxic I may leave it at that -- dry everything out and call it done. If toxic -- then makes sense to fog and then seal the wood. I can rig up an exhaust fan easily. Air flow will be down through the floor of the barn, so not much should migrate upward.

As for soda blasting -- the $20 siphon gun and plastic bucket sounds like the answer to cleaning motorcycle parts.

[redrider90]

Thanks for the advice on treating mold and on soda blasting.

We'll sample the mold this weekend and get it tested. We live in a pretty dry climate, at 5700 feet elevation and normally about 10% humidity. The cellar was flooded a few years ago when an irrigation ditch overflowed up the road -- the water ran over the road and through the cellar. There's a lot of mud that needs to be cleaned out, by shoveling and then pressure washing, and I'll put in a sewage pump to deal with the run-off from that.

Local expert says use the pressure washer to blast the mold off with a bleach solution. If the stuff tests nontoxic I may leave it at that -- dry everything out and call it done. If toxic -- then makes sense to fog and then seal the wood. I can rig up an exhaust fan easily. Air flow will be down through the floor of the barn, so not much should migrate upward.


As for soda blasting -- the $20 siphon gun and plastic bucket sounds like the answer to cleaning motorcycle parts.

Why you should not use bleach https://www.rhinohide.com/blog/never-use-bleach-to-clean-mold
Like I said "mold experts" do not know anything about it.
 
Does Bleach kill mold?

Yes, but it comes with a catch. Bleach labels will warn you that chlorine bleach will only be effective on a hard, non-porous surface.This basically means that chlorine bleach is not made to soak in. Therefore, its disinfecting properties are limited to a hard surface like tile or glass. So here's the problem: To ensure survival, mold spores spread its roots (Mycelia) deep into a porous surface. Mold remediation requires a cleaner to reach deep down into wood and other porous building materials to remove or "pull out" the roots. The properties of bleach prevent it from soaking into these materials. The surface mold looks gone (it's bleached white) but the internal mold always remains to grow back.

Another issue: Bleach contains 90% water and mold LOVES water. When bleach is applied, the chlorine quickly evaporates after use leaving behind A LOT of water. This water often soaks into the porous surface allowing the mold to flourish and re-grow in this moist environment. So in effect, using bleach actually feeds the internal mold spores! Although the surface may look bleached and clean, the remaining spores will root deeper, stronger and will often return worse than before.
I made that mistake and paid for it.
 There is a method to what comes first and if I remember it correctly you would
 1. fog first 2. then vacuum 3. sand (I guess you could soda blast which is less time consuming but then you throw up everything in the air. 4. fog again 5. vacuum 6. seal with forsite 
When vacuuming you should have an exhaust hose to your shop vac that goes to your exhaust fan or extends outside. Mold is 0.7 microns and HEPA filters are effective down to 0.3 microns but some spores can still make it past your filters. You want to avoid cross contamination at every point you can.
Fogging with sporcidin is something you need to do carefully. Wear a respirator and back your way out of the room. Get it heavy and leave the room shut for 4 hours. Although non toxic if you breath it you can temporarily loose your sense of smell. Sporcidin smell like chloraseptic throat spray. It takes a few days to week or two if open for it to completely air out. 
This sound like a perfect storm when you explain that is was flooded. That saturation is what stachy needs to grow.
If you are dealing just with wood then you may not need to remove any material but if you have particle board or sheetrock then you have to totally remove all sections of material that is growing mold.

[Rusnak_322]

here is a before and after of some carbs that I cleaned using a home made soda blaster (used a blow tool and some clear hose) and 4 boxes of baking soda that I grabbed from our two refrigerators and freezers. Cost me less that $10.








here is the how to that I used

http://www.aircooledtech.com/tools-on-the-cheap/soda_blaster/

[canuck750]

Soda is great for carb bodies, switches, electrical contacts etc.... safe and cheap to boot.

[harry h]

I got EXTREMELY sick in 2004 from mold. I had 2 kinds that were toxic. 1. the primary source was aspergillus in the crawlspace which primary source of food (substrate in science) is wood and is a sandy white color to it.  It needs high humidity vs some other kinds of toxic mold which require very wet conditions like you see in esp. after a flood or water leak called 2. stachybotrys which is usually black to greenish black. It loves to grow on the paper covering on sheet rock and in particle board. It primarily grows outside in hay and dead grass as its substrate. In my case the stachy came from a roof leak in the upstairs bedroom. It was behind a wall and I could not see it until the sheet rock was removed. Eventually when the inside of the house was clean and I mean clean we rebuilt it with foam insulation that did not grow mold and then covered it with sheetrock that had fiberglass cover vs the paper cover. The whole inside of the house down to the studs, including wood in the crawlspace were fogged with sporicidin  and sprayed with forsite.
Stachy is more toxic and is very heavy and does not spread through the air very easily whereas most other molds both toxic and not toxic easily spread through the air after even just walking by it.
I would consider doing a tape test where you apply tape and pick the mold up and have it tested.
You should treat all mold as if it is toxic and take extreme precautions to protect yourself while cleaning the surface. Soda blasting will spread mold throughout the whole area like bomb went off it there. It will spread the spores everywhere.  It will eventually settle out to the horizontal surfaces and lay in waiting to regrow and also for you to inhale when you are in that space. It may very well get into the barn itself using a soda blaster. It is best removed by sanding then then vacuuming with a HEPA vacuum. HEPA filters are available for all shop vacs. You have to clean the whole area after cleaning the mold. After doing that you then should fog the area with a product like Sprocidin See http://www.sporicidin.com/
Fogging will penetrate the whole area, including wood and sheet rock as well as lay down on dirt killing the mold. Mold even when dead is still toxic. So after fogging you should vacuum again. Then seal the wood with something like ForSite which is a water based paint with silver in it. Mold can neither grow on it nor through it.
 Finally you need to deal with the source of moisture that is causing the mold growth. All mold species except one require high humidity or direct contact with water. Example aspergillus requires high humidity >50% and strachy requires 70% saturation or water into the substrate to grow.  In my house the crawlspace was dirt so a 10 mil thick plastic was laid down and sealed to the concrete walls. You must not allow water to intrude into the crawlspace. If your walls are wood I am not positive how to do that. But sealing the wood with ForSite is just part of the deal. What are the walls of the cellar. If it is cement then you can seal the cement to prevent water intrusion and then add sealed plastic sheeting over that. Water moves right through cement hence it requires sealing to prevent water vapor from getting inside.  When done you need to have humidity levels no greater than 50%. If you are above that then a dehumidifier that drains into the pluming or outside will do.
TAKE EXTREME CAUTION TO PROTECT YOURSELF WHEN CLEANING MOLD.
Wear a P100 + carbon HEPA respirator and full goggles was well as clothes that you take off and wash every time you enter and work in the area.
You can also buy throw away one piece garments by the box.  Do not cross contaminate your house or the upper area of the barn. Ideally if you have a window in the cellar you put an exhaust fan on high while you are working in the area. If you do not have an window then do what professionals do and set up (rent) an exhaust system in the doorway so as to apply negative pressure so you are constantly pulling air out of the area. You leave this on until you are done. 
I cannot overstate how careful you must be with working with toxic mold. Chronic and or high dose exposure can totally set off a cascade of problems as you ingest and inhale it. Mold is fat soluble and loves the brain. It goes to a place called the hypothalamic pituitary axis which is where your endocrine system works. I was misdiagnosed for 2 /12 years after I got sick before I found an expert doctor who said check your house for mold. You can also have an allergic reaction which happen to my wife a few times. The allergic reaction comes from the inflammation mold causes in the body. It is not the kind of allergy you associate with say peanuts or seafood. Mold increases C4a. C4a is a protein that is an anaphylatoxin. In seconds she turned bright red, itching with hives, huge tongue and hard to breath. An epi pin save her.  I learned a lot about mold, its effects on the body and on remediation. Most remediators do not know what they are doing.

Can I hire you?  Only thing you left out is that the mold is actually not the toxic element, it is the mycotoxin that is created by the mold spore that is the toxic part to worry about.  About 75% of my customers are already sick from mold exposure.  Not something to take lightly.

[Rod]

Soda is great for carb bodies, switches, electrical contacts etc.... safe and cheap to boot.

I've got a California Air Tools 2.0 HP 4.6 Gallon compressor rated 6.40 CFM @ 40 PSI and 5.30 CFM @ 90 PSI.
I'm wondering if that's enough to clean an engine/transmission case as well as carbs etc. using this homemade method, or maybe Harbor Freight's 15lb soda blaster tank. I'm looking at doing a full restoration on an old loop. Also wondering if I'd need an enclosure, which I suppose I could home-make as well.
Anyone with experience on DIY blasting?

[Rusnak_322]

I did the frame and engine on my T3. Your compressor maybe small. What that means is that it will air pretty quickly. I could be done, but may be frustratingly slow.

First pic is after soda blasting / the next is the before.



I blasted in a area that i usually keep the garbage cans, just to keep the dust somewhat contained. It was great to prep the surface for paint, but the engine didn't look anywhere near as good as those carbs that I did.

I also did my frame, but again, it was more of a cleaning step to prep for paint rather than a stripping operation. This is what the paint looked like after the soda blast. I could remove paint down to bare metal, but it was very slow going and not needed.









Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[blackcat]

I had the CX engine soda blasted by a pro who usually blasts whole cars and his set up is huge, but he also does small things.  I think he charged me $75 bucks to do the entire engine, transmission and final drive. Evidently it takes him no time to do this work.

[redrider90]

Can I hire you?  Only thing you left out is that the mold is actually not the toxic element, it is the mycotoxin that is created by the mold spore that is the toxic part to worry about.  About 75% of my customers are already sick from mold exposure.  Not something to take lightly.

Ha.... thanks,
Well I almost got it right. I did mention spores in that quote: "Soda blasting will spread mold throughout the whole area like bomb went off it there. It will spread the spores everywhere". 

[Rod]

I had the CX engine soda blasted by a pro who usually blasts whole cars and his set up is huge, but he also does small things.  I think he charged me $75 bucks to do the entire engine, transmission and final drive. Evidently it takes him no time to do this work.

Yes, that's a good point. Once you're set up with a professional rig its not that big a job.
I can always do the home made setup for a small job.
Thanks, all for the feedback!