Reducing heat bill and fighting mold

[gorion83]

Me and my girlfriend started having some little mold spots near two pillars in our house. After googling a bit I found a product with very good reviews on amazon and around the web which seems to work.

However I also noticed that the same company is selling some kind of insulating paint which they claim gain about 5/6°C on wall temperature and a nice R coefficient.
http://www.tecnostuk.it/pdf/CertificazioneFreddoStop.pdf

So I tried to understand if this could give us a nice saving on the heat bill coupled with mold removal. After searching a bit around the blog I found an interesting article from MrMoneyMustache on cutting down the heat bill with insulation.

I then tried to estimate the ROI from painting the external facing walls with this special paint... but I thought I could show the calculation to you fellow mustachians to see if I have got anything wrong (which is likely to be the case)

So I started with taking a single room as an example. This room has a southward facing wall with two big windows (which I didn't take into account right now for the sake of simplicity).

So.. 15,7 sqm (5.7 lenght * 2,75 height)
R 0,3631 (used SI units, additional insulation from the thermal paint. Would be about 2 in US-R)
To estimate temperature gap i took the average daily temperatures for the coldest months (November to March) and calculated it as 21°C less this value (e.g. 12.5°C in December with an average external temperature of 8.5°C).

Then I calculated the hourly heat prevented from flowing out the wall as 15.7*0,3631*12,5 (in the December example) and multiplied by 24*31 (to have monthly December figures)

I divided the resulting Watt amount by 11k to obtain methane cubic meters saved and then multiplied by the cost by cubic meter.

On the costs side.. Costs per lt of painting would be 21 euros. To paint the wall with three coats I would need 9.5 liters, for about 200 euros.

Savings would amount to about 20 euros/yearly (according to this calculation), with a ROI of about 10% without including summer months.

Am I missing something?
Do you see any flaw in my logic?

[Sibley]

I'm not quite sure how painting is going to remediate mold. Plus, if you have a moisture problem, putting something that almost sounds like a moisture barrier is probably not going to help.

Fix the mold. Worry about the rest once you know that's taken care of.

[gorion83]

I used the word paint improperly.
That's a coating, transpirant material that you apply like a painting and it's the same white. You can also re-paint it with normal painting.

We don't have serious moisture problems, just some condensation on cold pillars vs warm walls.
The insulating product should keep the same temperature between pillars and walls (so eliminating condensation and mold as a consequence) and has the added benefit of improving thermal resistance.

Please also note that the mold killing coating is a different product compared to the one I'm considering which would be applied on top to the other.

If I can find some time I'll may add a google spreadsheet which may be easier to follow for calculations

[former player]

While you are busy with the calculations and spreadsheet, have the window open in the room affected by the mold.  It should be open long enough for the air circulation to remove the humidity which is causing the mold.  Repeat for a few minutes daily (the window opening, not the calculations and spreadsheet).  It's how our un-mathematically inclined ancestors without access to high-tech coatings dealt with the problem.

[gorion83]

Ignoring your sarcasm, let me explain that yes, we do open windows throughout the day.

We also have an hygrometer (with two sensors placed in various rooms) and a dehumidifier so let me state once again that moisture is not the problem. The problem is condensation on these two pillars.

Mold is not severe. We get 8-10 small circles every 5-6 months, each not wider than 1/10th of an inch. Howerver I'd like to avoid spraying bleach-based products on the wall every 5-6 months. After googling a bit i found the solution (which, by the way, works according to reviews of people in a situation similar to mine).

Then I noticed that the same company is selling an advanced insulated coating and the saving calculation is related to that product. Perhaps I should rewrite the post skipping the mold thing entirely to avoid confusion.

[Sibley]

Ok, given that understanding, then bleach the pillars to kill the mold, let it dry throughly, then try the coating.

[Reynolds531]

We had those insulation coatings in Canada for a short time. Be skeptical.

[GuitarStv]

We had those insulation coatings in Canada for a short time. Be skeptical.

+1

[gorion83]

We had those insulation coatings in Canada for a short time. Be skeptical.

That's what's worrying me.
Do you want to share your experience?

[Reynolds531]

I never used them, but they were only around for year or two. They were said to reduce radiant heat loss, but not conductive heat loss.

Around that time, natural gas spiked here and people were looking for solutions. If they really worked I think they would be all over the place here. I just don't see how a can of paint is going to do anything.

[GuitarStv]

We had those insulation coatings in Canada for a short time. Be skeptical.

That's what's worrying me.
Do you want to share your experience?

None of the claims by the paint manufacturers ever stood up to independent verification.  You get all the insulative value of an extra coat of paint, little more.

They're supposed to work by reflecting back light energy . . . which means, even if they did work perfectly, unless you regularly wash your walls their effectiveness will be significantly reduced over time as dirt and dust block the paint.

[Lulee]

While I do share the scepticism about the mentioned product actually insulating what I’m guessing are stone pillars (my assumption being that wood pillars would stay closer to the room temperature throughout the day and therefore not be as likely to have condensation enough to repeatedly spawn mold spots), by now, you’re likely already doing research to see if it really has a proven track record. 

What I’ve read on the internet has suggested that bleach and bleach-based products don’t work as well as ammonia-based cleaners in killing household molds.  You might find doing a very thorough cleaning of the entirety of each pillar with a different product may fix everything or at least make the recurrence less frequent. If I was right about the pillars being stone and the problem recurs after a clean-up with a more effective product, you could consult a mason to see if some sort of sealant might prevent the mold spores from re-colonizing.  They might also be aware of the product you were considering and if it would work as you hope.  My fear would be that the resin wouldn't adhere in the long term and instead flake off in sections.

The sealant doesn’t sound as if it is extremely expensive so a small scale test would be pretty straightforward.  If you could find some scrap made of the same material as the pillars, it would allow you to see if the resin would adhere properly, especially in a vertical application, and then do some quick tests with an IR thermometer to see if it does insulate as well as you hoped.

[gorion83]

None of the claims by the paint manufacturers ever stood up to independent verification.  You get all the insulative value of an extra coat of paint, little more.

They're supposed to work by reflecting back light energy . . . which means, even if they did work perfectly, unless you regularly wash your walls their effectiveness will be significantly reduced over time as dirt and dust block the paint.

That ties with what I found on the web for similar thermal paint.

However the one I'm talking about isn't really a paint, but, according to the producer definition "thermal insulation coating with high concentration of glass empty micro-spheres with acrylic resins"

The other "new" thing is that the guys actually got an indipendent verification of their claims from a third party (and a pretty well-known third party in Italy for this kind of certifications, IMQ) testing thermal insulation according to a european methodology. The link below is bilingual (Italian-English)
http://www.tecnostuk.it/pdf/CertificazioneFreddoStop.pdf

That's why I decided to search a bit more. I am wondering if there are any similar products on the other side of the Atlantic.

While I do share the scepticism about the mentioned product actually insulating what I’m guessing are stone pillars (my assumption being that wood pillars would stay closer to the room temperature throughout the day and therefore not be as likely to have condensation enough to repeatedly spawn mold spots), by now, you’re likely already doing research to see if it really has a proven track record. 

Yes, these are concrete and iron pillars.

What I’ve read on the internet has suggested that bleach and bleach-based products don’t work as well as ammonia-based cleaners in killing household molds.  You might find doing a very thorough cleaning of the entirety of each pillar with a different product may fix everything or at least make the recurrence less frequent. If I was right about the pillars being stone and the problem recurs after a clean-up with a more effective product, you could consult a mason to see if some sort of sealant might prevent the mold spores from re-colonizing.  They might also be aware of the product you were considering and if it would work as you hope.  My fear would be that the resin wouldn't adhere in the long term and instead flake off in sections.

I noticed that some sellers suggest re-applying a single coat of it after some years, indeed.
I'm still not sure if it's really needed or just a way to boost revenue.

The sealant doesn’t sound as if it is extremely expensive so a small scale test would be pretty straightforward.  If you could find some scrap made of the same material as the pillars, it would allow you to see if the resin would adhere properly, especially in a vertical application, and then do some quick tests with an IR thermometer to see if it does insulate as well as you hoped.

do you think any cheap IR thermometer would do?

[Christof]

I would be careful... Humidity doesn't go away. If you pillars aren't the coldest spots in the room, water will just be condensing in a different spot.

[gorion83]

I would be careful... Humidity doesn't go away. If you pillars aren't the coldest spots in the room, water will just be condensing in a different spot.

You are right. That's why they suggest applying the coating to the whole room.

[Lulee]

My relatively inexpensive IR thermometer from Amazon (made by CDN, model IN428) has a wide range (-67 to +428F) and measures in tenths of a degree.  I bought it for use in the kitchen but I used it this Winter to compare the temps of inner versus outer walls, windows with and without thermal curtains, how much colder the closed off fireplaces are than the outer walls, etc. and learned a lot.  It or something like it should allow you to verify how much colder the untreated pillars are and let you do any testing you want of the resin on similar materials to see if it can insulate enough to be worth the effort.

Granted, it’s not as cool as some of the way more expensive thermal imaging tools I’ve looked at but it works well enough for the uses most of us would have around our homes.  And at $40US versus several thousand dollars, well worth the money I spent.