Mold is found everywhere in the environment, and it plays a useful role when it’s outside your house. Inside the home, however, it can trigger allergies and more serious health effects, and you may need professional mold remediation to remove it. Find out how you can identify mold in your house and get rid of it before it becomes uncomfortable or dangerous.
How Mold Grows
Mold grows in places where there is food (any organic matter) and moisture. It reproduces by sending spores into the air, and if there is sufficient food and water, a few spores can multiply very rapidly. Some types can double the size of a patch of mold in an hour!
Where Is Mold Found?
Knowing mold is attracted to humidity gives you a pretty good idea of where to look for it in your house. It’s often located in basements and crawlspaces. Attics are another favorite place, as are bathrooms. You may be able to smell a musty odor even if you can’t see any visible mold.
Why Does Ventilation Help?
The purpose of ventilation isn’t just to cool down your house–it’s also to reduce the amount of moisture in the air. This drastically cuts down on the mold population, especially when you make sure humid rooms like bathrooms and laundry rooms have sufficient ventilation.
On the downside, that ventilation system that’s so effective at reducing the humidity in your home can also be responsible for spreading mold spores from one location to the rest of the building. That’s why it’s so important to act quickly when you discover mold.
How to Prevent Mold from Returning
If you find mold in your home, it can be difficult to get rid of on your own. Because it can get into your ventilation system or inside hidden spaces in your walls, you’ll probably need to call a company that specializes in mold remediation in NY. If you know what caused it–such as a flood or leaky toilet–the odds are pretty good that it won’t come back. If there was no obvious cause, however, you may need to take steps to improve the ventilation in your home to reduce the humidity, especially in areas where mold is prone to grow.