about a year ago i bought a 5-gal bucket of drywall mud. I used about 20% of it, and put the lid back on. today i opened it up and the top of the mud is covered with black mold.
anyone know what causes drywall mud to get moldy?
should i skim off the moldy stuff and use what's left, or has there been some chemical breakdown so now this mud will not work properly?
or even worse than that, is this mud "infected" with the same crap that caused the "sick house" recall of the made-in-china drywall?
Burn it.
Seal it back up and get rid of it. Black mold is badnews bears.
The bucket probably wasn't sealed tightly enough. Mold spores are everywhere, but I still wouldn't run the risk of introducing mold growth to my home.
I think you could skim off the top and use the rest but I wouldn't save what's left after your current project. If your using this "mud" where it will could get moist then no! Go with something that is designed for use in bathrooms, etc.
Is this stuff so expensive that it's worth the risk?
It's not the same thing as the Chinese drywall, it just got moldy from sitting around (it does contain water, so it's a nice environment for it.) Toss it and get another bucket.
This happened to me last spring for the first time. I was always in the habit of throwing a wet paper towel over the top of the mud to keep it moist, but last bucket opened with an inch of mold. I tossed it out immediately. I don't think they've changed anything, but I'd never heard of it before.
Get rid of it.
Toss it. Not worth the risk of introducing it to your home.
would floating a layer of bleach on the surface help preserve it? ... if bleach is even compatible at all
I haven't used that stuff in years. If you use this, you can mix as much as you need, and it sets in 20 minutes.
you can't skim it. the whole bucket will smell like moldy butt, then your walls will.
toss it, then go get some real mud that you mix yourself.
Chunk that stuff out.
The mold you see growing is just the reproductive part of the mold colony; the entire thing is probably shot through with mycelium.
Get rid of it.
thanks everyone. tomorrow is trash day, so out it goes, and i'll buy a bag of the powder.
I have found that drywall compound and paint will last a lot longer in the bucket if you treat it as output only. With mud, use a clean knife to get mud out of the bucket and don't put unused mud back in the bucket. For paint, never paint out of the bucket or put paint back into the bucket.
Think of the bucket as a Petri dish full of agar and your walls a big creepy crawly mass of spores and whatnot.
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