Renovate to prevent mould?
TL;DR - Has anyone intentionally “mould-proofed” their house during building or renovation and had success? Or not? What worked/didn’t?
1 story 70s brick veneer, Central Coast.
We’re at the bottom of a hill (national park and some houses above us) and have very damp soil, not just surface water but if you dig down.
Obviously we’ve had mould issues since we bought the place (2019). We’ve improved a lot of the drainage, installed insulation for half the house (had to take down the gyprock in part of the living area when we bought to check for/repair old termite damage, decided to just do the whole area right while we were at it), installed double glazed windows in the 2 bedrooms, and installed underfloor ventilation. It’s better, but not fixed, we’re still battling mould and moisture, and we have crazy high humidity - we have a dehumidifier in our room, but it’s annoyingly loud at night.
We haven’t done a full dig out of our backyard (the “uphill” side of the house) to deeply fix the drainage, and we don’t have a underfloor vapour barrier or insulation yet.
We want to do a full reno (insulate the whole place, expand a bit, fix the backyard drainage, change the layout a bit, the roof is basically at the end of it’s life, etc) and one of my big goals is to basically mould-proof the place. I know these problems aren’t unique to this house (every placed I’ve lived around Sydney has them, as do most people in our suburb), but I grew up in the Pacific NW (USA) - cold and damp all of the time, never any mould issues in newer builds - so I have to believe there is a solution out there.
Is this a pipe dream? Is it doable in this area? I’m wondering if I need to take a Passivhaus approach and install an HRV, or if there are less drastic ways to do it.
Obviously going to talk to building designers, tradespeople, etc, but first coming to the real source of truth for renovating in Aus, especially as you’re not trying to get my money. We don’t have endless funds, but we do have some health issues and a young child we want to protect, so I’m pretty determined to find a solution.