Show me your mouldy bits! (Dettox Mould and Mildew Cleaner)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	Dettox Mould and Mildew Cleaner
Date:	16/04/02 (827 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It works well on small areas, The bottle leaks as you use it

Disadvantages: No good for the patio then

Picture the scene?..

I am currently in the process of selling my house and the buyers' surveyor is coming tomorrow morning to make an assessment on my property. This is the bit that I have been dreading. Don't get me wrong I know that my house has always been well cared for and any problems have been addressed as they have occurred, but I am so scared he'll find something that we don't know about and our buyers will pull out. I know it?s silly but I can?t help it!

On rereading I have just realised how sexist that remark is! It could just as easily be a lady surveyor couldn't it?

Anyway back to the opinion - the one thing that I can do to help things along is to spend today trying to look at my house through someone else's eyes and see if there are any minor things which I can repair or correct to help the overall first impression.

This brings me neatly on to mould and mildew - well it would wouldn't it?

Seriously though our house is not a damp house but there are one or two marks near some of the windows, which might imply that it is a damp house if you see what I mean.

Off I set across the road to Asda to see if they'd got anything for the job and I found Dettox Anti Bacterial Mould and Mildew Remover at £1.86 for 500ml. I read the back of the carton and thought that it sounded just the job so back I came with my purchase to see if it lived up to its expectations.

The liquid comes in a green plastic spray carton with a white trigger style top. There is a hinged cap on the end of the nozzle that lifts up and clips to the top of the nozzle when in use and clips back over the hole when you've finished.

The instructions are to spray the liquid on the offending area from a distance of about 20 to 25cm, leave for three to five minutes and then wipe off. Care must be taken as this product contains bleach so it is advisable to wear rubber gloves, although I didn'
t, as I can't stand the things!

Care must also be taken to only use this product on the surfaces advised on the packaging - window frames, walls, refrigerator door seals, concrete patios, plastic shower curtains, doors, and tiles. You must not let it come into contact with fabrics, unpainted metal, unglazed tiles, coloured grout, chrome, copper, varnished wood or painted surfaces. Anything that you are not sure about, do a test first and leave for at least 30 minutes after completion to see if there are any adverse effects.

So I had read the instructions and I was ready to start. First I headed for the bathroom with plain plastered walls, which are painted pale apricot. Although the spray is not recommended for painted surfaces I decided to try it round the edge of the window frame in the bathroom.

The main problem that I encountered is the actual spraying of the product onto the surface. Spraying from 25cm away meant that the liquid covered a larger area than I actually wanted it to. As I sprayed it along the top of the window frame it ran down the window. This didn't really matter in the bathroom as I was intending to do the windowsill as well, but care must be taken where there are adjoining surfaces that might get ruined by the bleach.

I wiped the windows with some peach coloured toilet roll, being the first thing to hand and it turned white straight away! The bleach in this product is strong!

Anyway I left the spray on the bits of mould for about three minutes and then returned with a damp cloth to wipe it off. I was very impressed with the results! The mould came off easily and didn't remove the colour from the paint on the walls. I kept rinsing my cloth and wiping the area over so that I removed all traces of the liquid so that there wouldn't be any further reaction from it.

I then went into the bedroom where the papered walls are papered are painted with pale green emulsion paint. I repe
ated the same process as in the bathroom and wiped the windows in the same way. If you look really closely at the top of the window frame you can see that the painted wallpaper is very slightly lighter where the liquid has been, but the mould has disappeared completely. I did notice that one or two very small droplets landed on the windowsill, which is painted white so there are now a few spots where the sill is REALLY white! It shows that care has to be taken if you have a windowsill that would be ruined by bleach such as stained or varnished wood.

Next stop was the patio at the back of the house, which had developed some very green patches during the winter, but I was flushed with my success and thought that this would be easy to sort out.

First I brushed up all the leaves and bits of twig to give me a clear surface to clean. Then I sprayed the Dettox on the worst bits, but as I was doing this, the liquid began to run down the container and all over my hand - maybe I should have worn rubber gloves after all.

After leaving it for about five minutes I returned with the hosepipe and washed it off with limited success. Some of the green stuff had been washed away but not very much at all, in fact I would estimate that I would need at least four or five applications to get rid of it all. I'll go back to using the pressure washer on the patio then!

So that's about it then. In conclusion I would say that this product is ideal for indoor use, although I must admit that I only had very small areas of mould to deal with and I don't know how it would fare on larger areas.

I wouldn't bother trying it on for the patio again though, it was just a waste of money and time there.

I did keep washing my hands well all the while I was using this product to keep them free of the bleach and any cloths that I used will either go in the dustbin or the washing machine straight away too.

Oh and one other thing
my hands are SO dry now - where did I put my hand cream?

NB I will give it a four out of five rating here for the performance indoors.

Summary: