I had to park a car outside for a week and apparently the rain got in and it really reeks of mildew. I went to the hardware store and bought some Ridex cost me five bucks . It didn't work. Hardware store guy says ,spray some vinegar and water and that will get rid of the smell . I couldn't believe it within two minutes the mildew smell was gone. What a exciting day
Read “Miss Manners or Hints from Heloise” in a newspaper. Vinegar an fix about anything. Oh wait no one gets a newspaper any more..
I had some leather seats that had heavy mildew. Used the vinegar and water trick. Every trace was gone. Heck of trick to know and use!
I had a 65 Buick I bought for the engine, but it still had good plates that weren't expired so I drove it a bit. The big problem was both the back window and the windshield had leaked for a long time and there was a lot of mildew. My idea to get rid of the odor was baking soda set around the interior in paper plates. Didn't work, the baking soda actually mildewed.
You know you learn a lot as you go through life. As you get older you forget a lot. I forgot about Miss Manners , Heloise and The Fruitcake Lady and all their words of wisdom.
Get or save silica rock and put them in a container with holes. Those little do not eat bags. Also you can use the Downey unstoppables they are like dryer sheet balls. Also put them in a cup and they remove smells. If the car got wet inside you will have to make sure to dry it out completely. Use vinegar/water sprayed spray to kill the mildew. But you really have to let the car dry out well.
There are two issues here. The first is to kill the mildew, which is a fungus. A bleach scrub kills fungi, but would likely damage interior finishes, so vinegar as recommended above is probably best. The second issue is to keep the interior dry lest the fungus grow back. I've recently read up about that, and there are a few options available. There is a canister of desiccant available, which you leave somewhere in the car — I've had the idea of fitting a dedicated pocket to hold one (or perhaps a few.) It has a built-in heating element: when it no longer absorbs water you take it into the house and plug it into a wall socket overnight to boil out the water. I have no direct experience, but apparently the things work.
@Ned Ludd, I’ve never seen them with a built in heater to boil out the absorbed water. I do know that you must be careful not to spill the canister in the open pail type. The resulting water/chemical is almost impossible to clean up and it will rust metal in a short amount of time. I had a pail of it in a safe and spilled it when replacing. Rusted the bottom and front of the safe even after cleaning it several times and never did get the carpet underneath it dry. Had to replace the works.
Desiccant bags, a few were placed throughout my car when it was placed into a shipping container for the trip downunder from the US. On another note I stored a few collector guitars in cases at home for a friend and used larger bucket desiccant versions that I regularly replaced once moisture started to collect.
An ozone machine will do the trick. You can rent big ones or buy small ones from amazon etc. Worth the money!
Hello, That is nice the mildew smell is gone, but the vinegar solution is a great coverup. If the mildew is rampant, you need to check under your carpets. The padding that some people put in soaks up the moisture and gets wet. It stays wet and although the mildew smell is gone, the area still has the moisture. When I took my son to see a two door sedan for his first teenage vehicle, it was pure black and looked mean. My son was in heaven to see an all black car. The motor was powerful enough, the styling was cool and I liked the car, too. But, as soon as we got inside of the car for a test drive, I could smell the mildew. It was an “always garaged” car and the owner said it only saw the rain in emergencies. Little did he know that under my feet, I could feel a different carpet in the passenger side floor. It felt a little wet, not too much, but moist. So, I pointed it out to the owner. He put it off by saying every car has some moisture inside. Which might be true, but not all moisture reeks of mildew. The mildew almost overcame the power and ride of the vehicle, but not for a teenager’s first car without any problems from the start. Jnaki There was a drip coming from the heater unit and the carpet below the dash was wet, the floor was wet and I left wet shoe prints after getting out of the car. The owner had nothing to say about the wet carpet. So, we walked away. Mildew smell is the tip of the iceberg. There had to be some reason to get wet and whatever got wet, is still wet. Unless of course, you take out the carpet and run a heater fan for a couple of days of dry heat to burn up any moisture. Then the vinegar solution could be used to spray the surfaces. But, any absorbent material should be taken out and dried to its fullest. My wife’s 62 Corvair had the nasty habit of an infusion of water when we went through a deep puddle or two.. The drop down floor was covered with a layer of moisture and then a layer of water. Luckily she had small carpet pads and those were easy to take out and dry. But, the whole car spent days inside the garage with a heater and large circulating fan blowing over the whole floor and seats. Although the seats were not wet. YRMV NOTE: The dry heating elements come in all different sizes and shapes. Our concern was for the heating element to be sitting on a ceramic tile piece or sheet of metal for some kind of separation from the heating element. The directions do not mention the added separation, but no one wants to put a heating element directly on carpeted floors or on upholstery. The element heats up on low power, but the constant heat does not use up a lot of energy. So, it heats up when the object, hot rod/boat/closet is not being used. For the garage or weekend sailors, those dry heat items from Davis Instruments take care of the interior moisture. For a small space like the interior of a hot rod, the dry heat element will be the defining barrier of the moisture coming inside or building up inside of a cab. Moisture is a fact of life. (Even in fairly dry So Cal.) The good thing is, there is no removal of any water from using desiccants on a daily basis or is there a container full of water sitting inside of your hot rod, if you decide that you cannot get to the car for a couple of days. The dry heating element is DRY HEAT. There are several sizes of DRY HEAT. The large unit will heat the largest area and does the best job. If space is a premium, then the Davis Instrument #1459 will give off heat, but will take a little longer to get rid of the moisture. We started off with a small one in the cabin of our small, single wall fiberglass sailboat. It took too long, so we bought the larger one and that solved the problem while we slept aboard. Now, if we need a dry area anywhere, the large one did a great job. ( In the next larger single wall fiberglass hull) Just make sure that below the heating element, some kind of buffer is between the element and the floor/rug/wood. We used a 12x12 ceramic tile for all applications. We did use the larger one in the moist area of our older house. It definitely worked without any moisture anywhere. No water disposal, no spilled water creating more moisture, especially on carpeting. Just plain old dry heat to take care of any moisture from any source. https://www.amazon.com/Davis-Instruments-Air-Dryr-1000-Dryer/dp/B0014TMXVA
Don't you want to actually remove the mildew? And not just cover up the smell? Or is killing it with an agent enough? Just curious.
Vinegar is great. Also makes a good bio safe weed killer between patio stones etc. We tore out some wood basement wall that exposed black mold on some concrete. Bleach water mix will lighten the colour & kill it but apparently that is temporary. We learned that a cup of borax in warm water will kill mold & mildew. If the borax solution is left to dry on a surface the borax will prevent its return.
Borax is some great stuff. A small amount mixed with sugar and water is a great way to get rid of ants. Home made Terro. Sorry I got carried away, now back to mildew.
I have one and have used it all over my property. They are FANTASTIC. I wiped out all the 'basement smell' in my basement AND got the rank death smell out of my tin shed after a rabbit got trapped in there and died (melting into the plywood floor). For as inexpensive as they are, I've gotten way more than my money's worth already.
It's basically cat litter: the different types of desiccants are pretty much analogous to the different types of cat litter. Some are aluminosilicates, and I don't know how those would react with ferrous metals when they're saturated with water. "Crystal litter" is silicon dioxide i.e. silica gel, and I'd expect it to be safer for ferrous metals, besides which it's more efficient at absorbing water. Of course it's not hard to arrange a bag or closed-but-porous container. Here is one of the plug-in self-drying units: And the back, showing the built-in plug: I'm thinking, incorporate a few cloth pockets in the interior of the car, with one of these living in each. Inside the glove box? Under the dash? Map pouches on the door cards? Backs of the front seats? Parcel shelf— i.l.o. a rear window demister? What I like is that they need no on-board electrical power from the car. They're completely passive until they're saturated. And they're cheap, too. But as I say, I've never actually tried one.
Looks interesting, I might give it a try. This is the stuff that spilled in the safe. Nasty stuff if spilled but works great.
According to their website the active ingredient is calcium chloride. There's a specific warning about contact with metals or leather.
That Damp Rid didn't do it for me. I opened it up made a hard turn and the bucket turned over, crap all over my front floor. Luckily it landed on the floor mat , and it hardened and then there was a puddle of water. I checked all the floors nothing seemed to be wet. Park the car in the sun with the windows open a week later it's still stunk. This is why I was shocked that the smell was gone immediately after spraying that vinegar solution. I hope my floor pans aren't rusty , for I would surely die. Can anyone recommend a good paint to paint my floors with if they are rusty?
Guilty as charged for not reading the warnings.. It works great if your careful with the removal but probably not a good idea inside a car.
I swear by that brush on Rusty Metal Primer.With a coat of Rust o lium or two color top coat. Bulletproof. That's for my lawn and Garden stuff though. Maybe not refined enough for here?
I have heard that ozone will attack rubber but I don't know that for a fact. Anyone with ozone knowledge care to comment? Thanks
I looked into the ozone machines. They look interesting and it’s kind of cool how they work. Too bad they can’t make a bunch of really big ones and fix our atmosphere. Hell, I bet Mr Bezos could finance it with his petty cash account.
My wife's aunt put it on a leather seat and it ruined the seat. It caused the leather to dry out, shrink, and harden.
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