Mold season in Uruguay

If you hail from, and live in, a place where building construction techniques have changed in the last couple centuries, you may be thinking, “oh, interesting. I wonder when mold season is in Uruguay?”

But, no, it‘s an inside joke for locals. When is mold season in Uruguay?

All. Damn. Year.

cloro

Meet my new BFF: cloro puro, not the overpriced, diluted crap sold in orange bottles (which have their own recycle container at the local waste processing/recycling operation). In this case no doubt sold in a recycled bottle.

Remembering Syd’s tales of protective eye wear and scrubbing ceilings black with mold, I realize I had it relatively easy the last couple days (wasn’t even this bad), but it has been a bit of work. 1.5 liters of bleach consumed yesterday and today, and much of yesterday ended up consumed in the entirely enjoyable project of helping one of my son’s friends (early twenties) build a 6′ high bookshelf (the event also involved the death of the circular saw I bought for $40 from one of Syd‘s strange tenants [our only tenants turned out stranger still] AND a Hyundai angle grinder that went up in smoke for no apparent reason).

Simple accounts lead to stories and more stories and more than you need to know. Perhaps another time.

Mold

moldy wall in Uruguay

Given a combination of brick walls, poor construction (this is underneath a terrace that ‘sort of’ drains), and warm snaps during cold weather, Uruguay offers the perfect combination for growing mold on walls, shoes, and just about everything else.

Looking at building a house in the country (hey, what’s the problem?), we’re interested in alternative construction techniques. One is steel framing. They call it ‘dry construction.’ A new and exciting construction technique for Uruguay!

Not everyone, it appears, is convinced. A friend tried to explain the virtues of building with insulation to an architect in Montevideo. He put his hand on the wall, and said that in the winter up north, instead of being cold, the inside of the wall would be room temperature. To which the architect replied, well, you can turn on a heater.

As another friend points out, turning on a heater in a damp brick room is the best possible way to accelerate mold growth.

An argument for buying local?

The trusty Timberlands on the left have taken me through Mexico City, Paris, Prague, Bratislava, Buenos Aires. Notice the mold growing on them. The same is true of most shoes we brought to Uruguay.

The ‘Freeway’ shoes, made in Brazil and bought here, remain unaffected, even though stored in the same (ventilated) place.

What to make of that? Who knows.

If, however, you find yourself here and similarly afflicted, the answer (leftmost shoe) is Blem – furniture polish – and a rag.