Things You'll Need
Pressure washer
Pump sprayer
Bleach
Sand paper
Shovel
Garden hose
Artillery mold is known as a nuisance fungi, but that description does not begin to describe it. This mold, found on house siding, looks like small, black dots. In effect, it looks like someone shot your house with little, tiny bullets. In order to kill artillery mold, you must remove the spores from your siding and from the contaminated mulch that brought the spores to your home.
Step 1
Pressure wash the siding on your house. This will probably not remove much, if any of the artillery mold. However, it will make the black spots easier to see and may loosen or dislodge some of them.
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Step 2
Mix up a mold-killing solution. In the pump sprayer, combine 2 cups of bleach with 1 gallon of hot water.
Step 3
Spray the bleach solution on the mold. Let it sit on the mold for 15 minutes. Repeat the spraying process and allow another 15 minutes. Once this time has passed, rinse down the wall. This will kill the mold, but the spores will be stuck like glue.
Step 4
Sand off each individual spore. Take your sandpaper and scrub each little black dot off the siding. It is the only way to guarantee that the mold is dead and gone. Once you have finished, re-spray with the bleach solution to catch anything that might have survived; pressure wash again to prepare the surface for painting.
Step 5
Put all the mulch around your house into a big pile. This should be far away from your house so that the artillery mold does not make the leap back to your walls before you finish killing it.
Step 6
Soak the pile of mulch with the garden hose. It needs to be saturated. The pile should self-heat over the next week to 110 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the pile has been left on its own for several weeks, you should be able to safely use the mulch as the heat will kill the artillery fungus.
Tip
If you continue to experience problems, then you may need to dig up the plants around your house and remove them as well, since sometimes the fungus can travel on plants as well as in mulch. Non-composted, wood-rich mulches are the most likely to contain artillery fungus.
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