[VermiciousKnid]

Restorer,

Your screen name made me write this to you.

My mother's house is very old (mid-19th century), and of course has plaster walls. She lives right across the street from Long Island Sound, so there's plenty of water all around, but I have NEVER seen mold anywhere in her home.

I, on the other hand have a more modern house (can't afford any of the real nice oldies) built in the mid-1950s, and the walls are made of sheetrock. We also don't live waterfront (can't afford that, either! LOL). While we don't have a mold problem ourselves, other houses in the neighborhood have been afflicted with it.

My question to you is...are sheetrock walls more prone to this kind of damage than plaster walls? If so, is the paper content in the sheetrock the reason?

Regards,

[Restorer]

My question to you is...are sheetrock walls more prone to this kind of damage than plaster walls? If so, is the paper content in the sheetrock the reason?

BINGO!

Plaster is chemically close to concrete. Molds cannot eat it, since it is inorganic.

Drywall is paper made of cellulose (the fibrous portion of the wood) with the other mold repellent parts of the wood (lignins, tannins) removed. Paper is like baby food for mold. Then they laminate this paper onto both sides of a sponge (gypsum) and seal at least one side of it up inside a wall cavity so it can dry only very slowly.

BTW, some scientists have used drywall from Home Depot as a growth medium in laboratories for Stachybotrys. It grew better on it than on anything else they could find.

[finnman69]

If so, is the paper content in the sheetrock the reason?

Mold is designed to eat dead wood, what is paper made of?

There are new glass mat faced drywall products that are very mold resistant, its more expsensive than normal drywall, but its cheaper than a majpr mold problem.