black slimy mold around faucets

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nenimlas

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I have City water and I get a black slimy build up. I think it is mold but I don't know how or why it is happening. I can clean my toilet and within 2 days I get black specks in the bowl. The shower head has black slimy buildup after only a few days. I have a drippy nozzle on a fancy shower head system that get the slimy black build up. Where the water drips onto the shower stall floor there is a slimy pink buildup.

I am confused because we have City water that I would think had enough chlorine in it to kill just about any thing. do you have any idea what this might be.

Some times our water slightly smells mildewy also. I am greatly allergic to mold and I don't know if that is what this is. But if it is I need to take care of it.
Can anyone help me.

Thanks
 

JCressler

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Black mold

Sorry I don't have an answer, but I am working on this myself. I have consulted with several water people and no answer yet. Your description of the problem, is the first time in a year of searching, that sounds exactly like mine, including the pink stain and everything else, toilets ets. Its now even in our ice cubes. I like you am highly allergic to mold and do suffer from frequent sinus headaches. Let me know if you hear anything and vice versa.
 

Redwood

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Your pink stain and pink ice cubes are caused by an airborne bacteria Serratia marcescens. It's a tough one to get rid of...
 

IronMike

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Serratia Marcescens is usually seen (but not limited to) buildings that have had fire restoration. Typically its seen in building that have had flood or fire damage (result of the water used for fire). When the water soaks wood inside the walls and left to sit, the mold begins to grow. It then disperses particalls into the air. These particalls look for water to make their home and grow. This is what causes the pink ring in the toilet and the black "soot" from your faucets.
 

Hairyhosebib

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Your pink stain and pink ice cubes are caused by an airborne bacteria Serratia marcescens. It's a tough one to get rid of...

I have this going on in a Master bath and nowhere else in my house. I have never heard of this before nor seen it before. It all makes sense now. A few years ago we had a new ac and swamp cooler put on our roof. Maybe a year later my wife and I were working outside. She pointed to a place high on the block wall and said that it looked wet. It certainly did and I could not find an answer to the problem, it just made no sense at all. We started to remodel that bathroom, when I moved a box that had been setting on a small carpeted area on the floor where a small dressing table was originally built in, the bottom came out and the carpet was wet. No mold, no stink. It was just weird. The guy that installed the swamp cooler had ran the drain to the vent for this bathroom. I knew that and did not give it much thought. I got a flashlight and went into the attic but could not see much of the vent. I moved the drain and shown the light down the vent and there it was!! I just could not believe it. When they installed the vent the pipe was too short. They glued a male adapter on the end and took another short piece of pipe and glued a female adapter on it and screwed it on to make it go through the roof. I was able to pull this short piece of pipe straight up and out through the roof. It looked like the cartoon shotgun blast with the barrel blown out. There was some black mold under the drywall and we abated it as best we could with bleach and let it all air out good for several days once the entire bathroom had been gutted to the block wall. And every since then this pink stuff has been appearing. As soon as my water comes into the house it goes through two one half micron filters (.5), one particulate, one carbon and then it passes through a water softener. I'm sure glad I know the rest of the story.
 

jsbsmarcescens

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I joined this forum just to post the solution to this problem; a solution that works so well everyone should know about it. The post above correctly identifies the culprit as bacteria named serratia marcescens, but does not give this wonderful, bleach-fumes-free, easy, permanent solution for getting rid of it. I found many inquiries about how to clean off this common problem, but only found the answer in one place, which is why I'm spreading the news around.

Some key words to help people find this page: pink orange deposit growth mold bacteria shower tub grout serratia marcescens prevent rid.

This works so well it is effectively MAGIC and deserves the widest possible disemination. I'd been cleaning off this slimy stuff for fifty years and assumed it was in the water and left a deposit when it evaporated, like hard water calcium deposits. That is wrong. It is a harmless little beast once thought so benign it was intentionally injected into aquifers to trace the flow of water underground. It eats the fats in bar soap, so step one is to rinse out your shower each time you use it.

If serratia marcescens eats bar soap, it makes sense to throw the soap out in the Back Forty and switch to body wash, which I read is made from petroleum, but I found it is not necessary. We inadvertently bought some Sam's Club Members Mark "Moisturizing Body Wash With Shea Butter" and only recently found shea butter is a fat and our problems are gone! I suspect you could still use bar soap if you rinse and spray every time.

Despite our mistake, we have not a trace of anything in our shower after two months, not even dirt, and I haven't cleaned it once! Normally it would have dingy stuff where we stand that would have to be scoured off, plus the orange and black bacteria and mold. Ever since the first days of using the spray, the tile and grout have looked like the day they were installed. The beasts are gone and so is the dirt! I attribute this astonishing lack of grime to the vinegar, which I learned from my research is a terrific cleaner of almost anything.

As to the magic spray, let me give credit where credit is due. I did not come up with this formula, I only modified it to improve it based on lots more research and two months of experience. It was originally posted on this forum by a member named jadnashua. I used that info and added what I found during two months of experience and extensive searching elsewhere.

Jadnashua said you have to start with a clean shower, so scrub everything thoroughly one last time.

He also said to apply it liberally to a dry shower, but I have found it is not necessary to wait for the shower/tub to dry before spraying, nor to apply liberally, at least not after the first few days. I spray lightly every day immediately after showering and rinsing. I rinse only where tiles stay wet a long time, from 18" down incl the tile floor with a hand held sprayer, then spray same with the magic spray and walk away. Hydrogen peroxide used to be used to bleach hair blonde, so we substituted a white rug outside the shower door and we keep our towels away from it.

The original poster did not say how often we should spray, but I have been doing it every day and it takes less time than drying the shower. Rinse, spray, walk away.

Hydrogen peroxide is water with an extra oxygen molecule, making its formula H2O2. It hates sunlight, air, physical contact with other substances and even sitting unopened on a shelf, all of which make it lose its extra oxygen molecule. That turns it into H2O, plain water; useless for our purposes. For that reason, I make up the solution without hydrogen peroxide, adding it only when I fill my handheld quart sprayer. A sprayer full lasts at least a couple weeks. H2O2 will be plain water a month after opening it, and after about six months unopened on the shelf.

BUY THE FOLLOWING:

1. One HALF gallon of the cheapest vinegar you can find.

2. Boric acid. You will need one cup for the first batch. Boric acid is a powder and for many years was dusted around the house to kill roaches, but it is harmless to humans. Boric acid is one of the safest chemicals there are for humans, so no precautions are necessary. You will find boric acid ($3 in 7/2017) in Walmart sold as Enoz Roach Away. It comes in a bright yellow, 16 oz. by weight, plastic bottle that holds two cups. My Walmart stocks it in two locations: Insecticides, where it was sold out, and Food, which had some.

3: A quart or two (but no more because it goes bad) of hydrogen peroxide. In 7/2017 it was in the Walmart pharmacy First Aid section for 88 cents a quart. It is sold in dark plastic bottles to protect it from light, it must be used within a month after opening and it must be recapped tightly.

4: An excellent 88-cent Walmart clear plastic empty 32 oz spray bottle with volume marks in ounces and mL. Mark it SHAKE WELL.

5. Find a spare gallon jug, rinse it and label it shake well.

DIRECTIONS FOR MIXING

In the gallon jug, add one half gallon of vinegar and funnel in one cup of boric acid. Shake well. Not all the boric acid will dissolve. You now have half of your magic mixture. You will make the complete mixture in the spray bottle as required. To fill your sprayer, shake your gallon jug and fill the sprayer half full with the vinegar boric acid mixture. Without touching the mouth of the hydrogen peroxide bottle to the sprayer, fill the rest of the sprayer with H2O2. Invert gently to mix. The spray will leave a barely visible white coating of boric acid after it dries.

The hydrogen peroxide is an odor free bleach substitute. It and the vinegar strip the cell walls from the S. marcescens and the boric acid keeps it from coming back.
 
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