Ocean Boulevard and Kings Highway are lined with towers and hotels. Visit Myrtle Beach counts roughly 425 hotels and about 157,000 accommodation units strung along sixty miles of beach, which adds up to a lot of bathrooms and a lot of doors propped open in August. In a humid subtropical climate, that air goes wherever the building lets it.
Inland the problem changes shape. Restaurants and shops along Highway 17 Business run walk-in coolers and dish pits that never fully dry out. Market Common, the 114-acre district that opened in 2008 on the old Myrtle Beach Air Force base, is newer and tighter, and in a tight building a small leak has nowhere to dry to. Offices and clinics usually call us about a smell rather than a stain.
The expensive one is the unit nobody has opened since April. Absentee owners and managers set the thermostat high in an empty unit to keep the bills down, which is normal practice here and a reliable way to give mold the conditions it wants. The person who finds it is a guest or a tenant, so it arrives as a complaint rather than a maintenance ticket.