Awaab's Law, part of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, was introduced in July 2023 to improve tenant safety following the tragic death of Awaab Ishak in a housing association home in Rochdale. The law mandates landlords to address health and safety hazards, including damp, mould, and extreme temperatures, covered under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS). Landlords are required to promptly remediate issues, document actions, keep tenants informed, and adhere to stricter timelines, such as completing emergency repairs within 24 hours. Non-compliance can result in unlimited fines, legal battles, reputational damage, and tenant lawsuits or complaints to the Housing Ombudsman, reinforcing the importance of tenant safety and accountability.

We have already seen reports of landlords being handed hefty fines due to not acting quickly enough to address damp and mould issues in properties, many stating they were unaware of the new laws and timescales now in place. In many respects, issues arise because the causes and problems related to damp and mould and suitable solutions are not fully understood, meaning that often inefficient steps are taken to attempt to help reduce damp and mould, sometimes at great cost, but either do nothing to help or create new problems rather than solving them.

I hate to break this to you but, there isn't one silver bullet, no single product or action that is the universal answer to all domestic damp and mould causes, and issues vary from case to case. But there is a discernible pattern that allows us to find the correct solutions to cure the issue. It is a love triangle between three key causes and their specific solutions that can spearhead the attack, a trifecta of approaches that can proactively guard against and reactively cure damp and mould in our homes. 

In many reactive cases, usually one or two of these causes will already have a suitable solution in place, meaning that the solution often only requires one or two “fixes” to be made to raise the shield and stop damp in its tracks, ideally also reversing any adverse effects that had previously taken route.

So, what are these three solutions that make up this moisture-less trinity?

These three areas combined create a strategy and protection greater than the sum of their individual parts by neutralising factors that promote damp and mould whilst also correcting the negatives some of these options create when used on their own. So let's look at each of these factors, their solutions and the negative impacts that they can cause when not effectively combined together to form an effective solution.

Let’s start by looking at the root causes of mould and the variables that produce the perfect environment for it to thrive. 

Mould is a state in which some fungi can present themselves. Usually dust-like and coloured in appearance, moulds are a formation of spores that allow the fungi to disperse and spread, with many of the spores being airborne. When we talk about household mould, the most common are Alternaria, Ulocladium, Penicillium and the two best known moulds, Stachybotrys chartarum and stachybotrys chlorohalonata, also referred to commonly as toxic black mould. All of these moulds thrive in a moisture-high environment which is why they are so prevalent in wetrooms and other areas of buildings that accumulate a build-up of damp. They are also all hazardous to health - some more so than others, but all can cause complications, especially to those with underlying respiratory health issues. 

To create a hostile environment for these moulds we need to reduce moisture. However, moisture is an inevitable by-product of habitation; through bathing, laundry, cooking, even respiration and perspiration, not to mention potential moisture ingress from leaks, rising damp and other structural failures. And then we have Science to deal with - in the form of evaporation, condensation and capillary action, moisture has a tricky habit of making our modern domestic lives difficult when it comes to battling mould.

It didn’t always used to be this way. Yes, we’ve always had mould and damp issues, but the scale of the issue changed because we tried to fix something else which inadvertently caused a knock-on effect that exacerbated the damp issue. Let's take a little trip back through architectural time…

Houses used to be constructed with passive airflow built into the design. Air bricks, underfloor airflow channels, cross-ventilation and stack effect ventilation. The key word here is passive. All of these solutions allowed for fresh air to enter a building and allow stale air to exit. However, these options had one thing in common - heat loss. Allowing internal air to escape the building did help remove stale and humid air, but it also allowed the heat to escape with it and yes, fresh air could enter uninterrupted - but that meant cold air in winter could enter to replace the hot air leaving, hiking up heating bills.

To make houses more economical by reducing heating costs, the decision to design new houses and to retrofit old with upgraded insulation techniques was a necessary step in the fight on energy consumption - and rightly so! By effectively sealing the home to virtually airtight standard with new double-glazing and UPVC doors while also layering suitable heat retention materials to the building structure, a fully insulated house became a far more economical investment, lowering heating bills overnight.

However, one vital point was not taken into enough consideration. Ventilation.

By virtually sealing the house to retain heat, almost all the free air movement of the past designs stopped. Gone were the multiple air bricks and cross ventilation, no more with the underfloor air channels and stack effect ventilation. Instead, the newly designed and overly insulated houses trapped the stale air and moisture in the building with very little natural ventilation to help keep the internal air healthy. 

But what about extractor fans I hear you say? Well, this poses a new problem. Extractor fans were in use before the change in housing construction, but the new building style also posed problems for mechanical ventilation. This is where a little bit of science comes into play. Nature abhors a vacuum we are told and, although the statement isn’t entirely true, this is essentially the principle on which ventilation relies on. As air moves it creates a void which must be filled or a vacuum will be created. As air is drawn out of one space by a fan, new air must be free to flow into the newly vacated space that the old air has been removed from. Put simply, if a fan is on, an equal volume of air must be free to be pulled into the space to replace that which is being removed by the running fan unit. It means looking at extractor fans in a new way for most people.

Instead of thinking of an extractor fan as a product that removes air from your bathroom for example, think of it as a fan that moves air for your bathroom! It’s easy to see why we think more of the former statement - it has the word extractor in the title, but in truth the latter is a more accurate statement (and for clarity - the word extractor in the product name is merely there to note the direction of airflow). 

When an extractor fan is turned on, its sole purpose is to draw stale and/or humid air out of a space. As it draws air through its impeller it creates negative pressure in the space where the air once was, and as nature really doesn’t like where this is going, it fills the emptying space with more air to stop that pesky vacuum from emerging in an attempt to rebalance the pressure. Taking the example of a bathroom, as the air is extracted, the replacement air wants to be sourced from within the home rather than from the outside - especially in colder weather - so air will be drawn in passed the base of the door or perhaps through a passive internal grille supplying warm interior air. But there is a knock on effect here. Now air has been moved from the landing which needs to be replaced from the downstairs hallway via the stairwell… and the hallway air needs to be replaced from the living room… and the living room air needs to be replaced from… and  on, and on. Unless there is air coming into the home at an equal rate from the outside somewhere, the fan in the bathroom is going to slow and stop being effective, and if the house has been well sealed for insulation, that return air may be difficult to obtain. 

It is essential therefore to have a supply of fresh air into a well insulated building to address the balance. This can be in the form of passive air grilles, but this rather defeats the object of insulating the property in the first place. Therefore a mechanical solution is needed that can filter and warm the incoming air to maximise heat retention, minimise introduction of pollutants and balance the flow of outward extracted air.

One option is to install a PIV or Positive Input Ventilation unit into the property. This type of unit, often installed in loft spaces with passive ventilation to the outside, pulls air in through filters and forces the air into the property. During cold periods, the units often come supplied with heating elements to warm the air before introducing it into your home. Pairing these with constant running dMEV fans in place of traditional intermittent bathroom, utility room and kitchen fans help to create circulatory ventilation throughout the home.

Alternatively, you can install single room or whole house heat recovery systems which both extract stale and humid air while supplying filtered air that is warmed using a heat exchanger that is warmed by the outgoing air and passes the warmth to the incoming fresh air helping to retain heat and minimise energy costs. Whole house systems are best installed during construction or major restoration work as retrofitting ducting runs from your loft to all areas in the home can be very disruptive! Whereas, single room heat recovery systems can be installed directly through external walls similar to standard extractor fans and can help protect the more vulnerable spaces in your home directly.

So we have covered insulation and ventilation, but without maintaining a decent level of heating, damp and mould can still take hold. This is due to what is known as the dew point. Picture a lovely summer's day. You take a nice cold can of a refreshing drink from your fridge and place it on the garden table. Within minutes the outer surface of the can glistens with water droplets. This is because the can surface is cold and the warm air is full of water molecules which have been happily floating around in the atmosphere since they were evaporated by the heat of the sun. But the second they come into contact with the cold surface of the can they immediately condense back into liquid form. This same principle happens in your home.

When you take a shower for example, the hot water produces steam in the air - evaporated water molecules - and when the steam comes into contact with a cold surface such as your mirror, window glass or an unheated external wall, the steam condenses onto the surface. Now, unless you intend to install heating pads behind your mirrors, tiles and the layer of plaster on your walls and ceiling, you are always going to get some condensation, but if the room is kept at a sensible constant temperature, and in turn help maintain a warmer temperature of the surfaces in the room, you will slow the process of condensation while promoting re-evaporation of any surface condensation throughout the day and night that has accumulated. This will help to reduce damp damage and remove the perfect mould breeding grounds. 

But energy costs are sky high, I hear you cry! Yes, yes they are, but maintaining a well insulated household to a temperature of around 17-19°C is possible without costing the earth and will save a lot of redecoration bills to fix damp and mould damage as well as helping to maintain a safer living environment. It is worth taking time to explain the benefits of this to your tenants if you rent your property, and there is lots of supporting information and learning tools for both landlords and tenants to be found on the damp and mould key topic page on the Housing Ombudsman Service website to help with this.

Remember though, all three of these actions need to be addressed to fix the problem! Ventilating without a decent return of air will render mechanical ventilation ineffective while a lack of insulation and ventilating with passive external airflow will drop the internal temperature during colder months and cause either a higher level of condensation and/or a higher heating bill. Heating to 17-19°C will help to slow condensation, but without ventilating the humidity out of the building you are effectively improving the breeding ground for mould!

Essentially, you need to treat your enclosed living spaces as tiny ecosystems which need to be kept in balance, much like our planet and our current on-going struggles with climate change. By balancing your home’s ecosystem in an environmentally sustainable way through heat retention, heat recovery and ventilation, not only do you improve your own home’s environment, but you will be contributing to helping the planet at the same time.