# The health benefits of the simple act of properly caulking your shower panels.



## WillK (Aug 29, 2010)

Today as I was in the process of staging tools to drop into my crawlspace, I decided to take on a relatively small task of recaulking the tub. We've lived in the house a year, and the caulk job done was bad, but when you have fire hazards, leaky roofs and a 93 year old house sitting on cement blocks instead of a foundation, caulk seems low priority.

I've suspected the house of contributing to minor but frequent colds and coughs, but I've been focussed on bigger things like having ducts cleaned, extracting decaying materials and eliminating sources of moisture in the crawlspace.

Today I had the chance to see how a bad caulk job can retain moisture and grow mold. When I scraped out the caulk, I could smell it and I don't have a very sharp sense of smell.

So I'm attaching 3 photos. The first shows the caulk I had scraped off. The second is a closeup of one of the blackenned pieces of caulk. The third is the finished, cleaned and caulked tub.

Apparently the last time caulk was applied, the caulk was squeezed out of the tube and left as is without blending it into the corner. 

Omitting this simple yet important step resulted in water running down the shower wall pooling on top of the caulk. 

All that needed to be done is push the caulk into the corner, this can be done with a finger, and for a cleaner joint without messing up your finger, all it takes is a tool that costs $2 or so and can usually be found right where you buy caulk.

One last note: For what it's worth, I only worked on the bottom edge. I ultimately plan on building a new bathroom and demo'ing this one and that's likely to happen within the year.


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## Plumbinghow (Jun 19, 2012)

You do the run the risk of black mold living in the tub and behind, the small spores can be very dangerous when inhaled.


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