Remove mildew from cloth seats

[Wiserphil]

I have tried diluting bleach with water and spraying the seats with no luck. Any ideas?

Thanks

[Pureshine]

You need to steam clean them only way you will fix or use an extractor.

[Danube]

Megs APC is the must in the process.

[PiPUK]

'Alive things' are quite tough to deal with. Most people use a standard APC and this is most often adequate to remove the visible effects. Unfortunately it is rare for an automotive specific APC to contain anything which will actually kill spores/bacteria/underlying cause - chemically, many of the most commonly used agents for doing this are somewhat incompatible with the majority of APCs. What this means is that the microscopic causes of the mould/mildew/etc. tend to remain. Most often this is shrugged off a routine and expected return which just means another clean is required when the reality is that poor choice of product has in fact resulted in the problem returning much more rapidly than it should. In practice, unless there is a new source of spores, a properly cleaned and sanitised surface should simply not get mouldy again. Bleach is of course the obvious biocidal agent but it is really a bit aggressive for use here. Other agents to seek out are 'quats', commonly ammonium chloride based surfactants - these are highly effective, even at large dilutions (off the top of my head, to pass UK hard surface sanitising tests, something like 1 part in 1250 is quite adequate).

Of course the OP has a more difficult additive in the mix - fabric seats. Bleach is already noted as having been ineffective. A couple of thoughts would be first that the bleach was probably not strong enough to be effective (effective bleach solutions would likely have actually bleached and destroyed the fabric). Beyond that, with a seat you have padding etc. so there may well be spores deep within and a surface clean would provide only short term results. Pureshine has the answer to this - steam cleaning. This will ensure that much more of the volume of the seat is treated and maximise your chance of doing it correctly. The inclusion of an appropriate biocidal product would boost the chances further.

A couple of final notes:
1) Biocidal/Bactericidal is very different from biological. There are a lot of products based on biological solutions - these actually contain 'friendly' bacteria which do the cleaning instead of traditional chemicals. Don't try steam cleaning with one of these because the steam will kill the good bacteria! For steam cleaning, any additive needs to be a chemical biocide/bactericide/fungicide/algicide/(insert you term...).
2) Fabric cleaning needs to be done with care. Whilst alkaline cleaners are the standard norm for APCs etc, you should not leave any fabric without neutralising any residual alkalinity. The reason is that fabrics tend to be susceptible to decaying in alkaline conditions and also colour fastness is compromised. You will not see this immediately but over time this can accelerate rotting and damage to fibres, not to mention the fading of colours. If you are going to use alkaline cleaners on fabric, please seek to use a neutralising product as the final step or do so using a steam and extraction cleaner which will hopefully remove the majority of the residual alkalinity.

Good luck with the problem.

[rmagnus]

'Alive things' are quite tough to deal with. Most people use a standard APC and this is most often adequate to remove the visible effects. Unfortunately it is rare for an automotive specific APC to contain anything which will actually kill spores/bacteria/underlying cause - chemically, many of the most commonly used agents for doing this are somewhat incompatible with the majority of APCs. What this means is that the microscopic causes of the mould/mildew/etc. tend to remain. Most often this is shrugged off a routine and expected return which just means another clean is required when the reality is that poor choice of product has in fact resulted in the problem returning much more rapidly than it should. In practice, unless there is a new source of spores, a properly cleaned and sanitised surface should simply not get mouldy again. Bleach is of course the obvious biocidal agent but it is really a bit aggressive for use here. Other agents to seek out are 'quats', commonly ammonium chloride based surfactants - these are highly effective, even at large dilutions (off the top of my head, to pass UK hard surface sanitising tests, something like 1 part in 1250 is quite adequate).

Of course the OP has a more difficult additive in the mix - fabric seats. Bleach is already noted as having been ineffective. A couple of thoughts would be first that the bleach was probably not strong enough to be effective (effective bleach solutions would likely have actually bleached and destroyed the fabric). Beyond that, with a seat you have padding etc. so there may well be spores deep within and a surface clean would provide only short term results. Pureshine has the answer to this - steam cleaning. This will ensure that much more of the volume of the seat is treated and maximise your chance of doing it correctly. The inclusion of an appropriate biocidal product would boost the chances further.

A couple of final notes:
1) Biocidal/Bactericidal is very different from biological. There are a lot of products based on biological solutions - these actually contain 'friendly' bacteria which do the cleaning instead of traditional chemicals. Don't try steam cleaning with one of these because the steam will kill the good bacteria! For steam cleaning, any additive needs to be a chemical biocide/bactericide/fungicide/algicide/(insert you term...).
2) Fabric cleaning needs to be done with care. Whilst alkaline cleaners are the standard norm for APCs etc, you should not leave any fabric without neutralising any residual alkalinity. The reason is that fabrics tend to be susceptible to decaying in alkaline conditions and also colour fastness is compromised. You will not see this immediately but over time this can accelerate rotting and damage to fibres, not to mention the fading of colours. If you are going to use alkaline cleaners on fabric, please seek to use a neutralising product as the final step or do so using a steam and extraction cleaner which will hopefully remove the majority of the residual alkalinity.

Good luck with the problem.

Whoa you brought this converation to a whole new level. Great info.