The moisture meter of Ewoud Koremans from Roosendaal rages while he goes past his walls. He lives in a fungal house. For two years he has been suffering from black fungus in his bedroom and basement. The consequences are so serious that he no longer sleeps in his own house. “The children get stuffy and my partner experiences a lot of pain.” Ewout is certainly not the only one who is struggling with these problems. Reason for Omroep Brabant to start a reporting point about this.
Ewoud has been living in a moldy house for a long time. At first he didn’t think much about it. “When I put the curtains aside in the bedroom, I suddenly saw a black spot. I then removed them nicely, but in no time it came back.” The landlord was then informed, but then did nothing about it.
Two years later the situation has still not changed. Ewoud and his partner have now decided not to stay in the house anymore. “My partner has fibromyalgia, or rheumatism in the soft tissue. When she sleeps here, she gets up with enormous pain. If she sleeps in her own apartment, she immediately gets up.” According to him, it also refers to the airways of the children when they are in the house.
When you have fungus in your owner -occupied home, it is of course very annoying, but your own responsibility. Ewoud rents the house and feels more and more powerless after an endless discussion with the landlord: “It makes me very angry, you can’t do anything. If it was my own house, I would have tackled it for a long time. But I don’t get permission to do it to solve. “
“It’s soaking wet here.”
Ewoud goes along the walls of his basement with a moisture meter. He starts to squeak immediately. The device measures a humidity of 60 percent. “We speak of a dry wall up to 20 percent,” says Ewoud. “From a humidity of 30 percent it is already a ‘wet wall’. In other words, it is soaking wet here.” Saving food in his basement is not an option: “It pulls in the cardboard packaging. I can throw away everything in the basement after a week.”
“There are two ways to dry a house: insulate and ventilate,” says Ewoud. And that is not possible in their house. No window can be opened on the ground floor. A third way to dry a house is to heat it, but there is disagreement with the property owner about Ewoud’s wood stove. “For the landlord it is an investment, but it seems as if they forget that this is my home,” he says emotionally.
Schimmelhuizen reporting point
Ewoud thinks he is not the only Brabander who lives in a fungal house: “I know that there are a lot of these stories. But a healthy living environment in your own house should be the absolute minimum requirement?”
Just like Ewoud, we suspect at Omroep Brabant that there are many more people from Brabant who feel equally powerless. That is why we have opened a hotline so that you can tip us about the situation at your home. This way we get an overview of all fungal houses in our province.
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