Indoor mould testing in a historic building: Blickling Hall

Yasemin Didem Aktas,Nigel Blades,Jiaqi Shi,Dina D’Ayala

doi:10.1186/s40494-018-0218-x

Yasemin Didem Aktas, Nigel Blades + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-018-0218-x

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Abstract

Indoor mould growth is a growing concern for all stakeholders of built environment, including residents, builders, insurance and building remediation industry as well as custodians of heritage buildings. The National Trust has reported this problem in a number of buildings under their ownership, and developed solutions and fine-tuned their maintenance programme so as to minimise indoor and surface mould growth risk. This paper reports findings from an extensive mould-testing scheme in Blickling Hall, a National Trust property in Norfolk, England, for an appraisal of airborne and surface mould levels within a total of eight rooms, including the famous Long Gallery. The testing protocol used combines active (aggressive) air sampling and surface sampling, analysis of the β-N-acetylhexosaminidase (NAHA) activity to quantify mould levels and particle counting. The results show that the airborne mould levels are quite low in all spaces, due to satisfactory maintenance of indoor hygrothermal conditions by conservation heating. On the other hand, while the National Trust’s developed solutions and maintenance programme have proved effective to avoid surface mould growth in those locations that historically suffered from microbial activity (such as behind book presses, picture frames and tapestries), the results show that the surface cleaning around windows should be improved to tackle surface water due to condensation, which is considered to be the main driver behind high surface NAHA activity obtained in these areas.

Highlights

Indoor mould growth is one of the most common factors that cause adverse health effects and fabric deterioration in buildings [1,2,3]
We report our findings from an air and surface mould-testing campaign carried out in February 2017 in eight rooms at Blickling Hall, including the famous Long Gallery, for the aim of an appraisal of mould levels within the Hall, as well as the cleaning and maintenance programme of the National Trust
According to the benchmarks recently developed for the UK building stock and for the same testing protocol as the one used here, NAHA activity values above 1700 RFU could be indicative of mould growth and require further investigation of the space for a mould source [26]

Summary

Introduction

Indoor mould growth is one of the most common factors that cause adverse health effects and fabric deterioration in buildings [1,2,3]. We report our findings from an air and surface mould-testing campaign carried out in February 2017 in eight rooms at Blickling Hall, including the famous Long Gallery, for the aim of an appraisal of mould levels within the Hall, as well as the cleaning and maintenance programme of the National Trust.

Results

Conclusion