a mold expert Samuel Dixon to help us out and sama I want to say first of all how common is this is this happening in a lot of our washing machines I ran into this problem yesterday at my last inspection and last week at least twice I've had this happen where people are telling me as a mold inspector come look in my home for mold around the house and it's not there and I end up actually going into the washing machine and looking there because I know of this problem and the first time ever ran into it was actually I was at my stepmothers house and I was taking a shower in the towel that we had there it smelled horrible when I got out of the shower and I couldn't figure out what it was and so I had this urge and I started looking everywhere I went into the washing machine and a pill back the lip of the machine and you could see this black mold growing on the inside of the washing machine around the gasket yeah so this is a flawed design then yeah because they created it with this gasket which you don't have on the top-loading machines the regular old machines you don't have this gas you only wear ice to them when you look at this here you can see that there's this this kind of rubber gasket in this area and when I when I first found the problem you end up reaching inside and peeling back the lip here you can see and you get all kinds of mold inside here around the the outside in this area and and it's just one of these things you're just not gonna see because you're not paying very close attention to it when you have these high-efficiency machines you know they say you have to use high efficiency soap yeah yeah but the other problem you run into is they use less water and people think if you use more soap that you're gonna get more cleaning power yeah but that's not how it works you have to use the right amount of soap in order to get these machines to work and when they don't the soap coats the machine mold spores are in the air everywhere around us and there's a lot of moisture in the machine and that environment that they've created creates in this mold problem all right so two things number one how much detergent should we be using usually you should probably be using on regular loads probably only one tablespoon and I know that they have the different lines on the inside if you measure it it's a very small amount more is not better slightly important I've been making that mistake I've been using more yeah and then everybody's done it the other big thing is let's just say we have some concerns or we see some mold who do we call what do we do well one of the things that you definitely run into in this is that they do have repair people and often on the inside or in the directions that come with the machine it has their phone number number two to have someone come out and look at it they would then come and repair it clean out the inside if it's under warranty they often pay for it and you don't charge you anything but sometimes it can get quite steep add one customer they said over three hundred and fifty dollars just to try to come and clean out the inside of the machine now is there a way to prevent the mold from happening some kind of regular things you can do definitely one of the key areas again you have to always make sure that you keep the door open an order to keep people always try to close the machine if it looks good this way it looks nice but a lot of them Samer they're in closets right to shut the door and there's a door you want to close in front of it again this is a real problem because if you do that you're trapping all of the steam and moisture inside of the machine you can even start to get mold growing on on them on the excess soap that's on the glass cover and it will grow all on the inside so the way to keep this area clean is you want to keep the door open wipe down the inside you can use something as simple as distilled vinegar white vinegar in particular will help to clean off the surfaces and you wipe this area down peel back the lip make sure you're drying that out if you did that once a week you should probably stay very clear of these problems mold needs moisture to live and I think one of these obviously if you're noticing smells you see it you need to get it addressed really quickly what kind of mold is you finding usually we're finding black mold I'm actually brought some pictures for you guys to see of actual cases that I found and this mold that you see in front of you is black often it can be brown you get speckles and it's hidden that's the inner lip there and you know it's just one of these things where if you pay very close attention to what's going on in your machine you'll see these black spots and you'll know immediately you need to fix it and obviously there's the element of oh it's gross it's mold now black mold if you're seeing this in your washer and dryer it can not only just be an irritant a respiratory irritant it can be a physical irritant to your skin or your eyes but if you have anyone in the house who has allergies or asthma or has a compromised immune system that's when mold can truly become dangerous to your health that's why you got to keep it under control and Sam these tips have been phenomenal I'm gonna next time I do my wash I'm using less detergent well so think I'm taking this home with me a little work to do and we'll have it our website dr. steamy calm a lot of washing machine mold prevention tips for you saying thank you so much work again