Valor Mold

With Mold, Out Of Sight Should
Never Mean Out Of Mind

Most Virginia homeowners don’t think about mold until they stumble upon it in their home or their family starts to have symptoms of household mold infestation. To be proactive in the battle against household mold, homeowners need to keep an eye on the places in their homes that aren’t easily seen.

Why Is Keeping Mold Out
Of Your Home So Important?

If there is only one thing to know about mold, it’s that mold is everywhere you look. Every breath taken by every human to have ever lived has contained mold spores. Knowing that mold spores are everywhere and have always been, you might wonder why household mold is such a big deal?

Mold spores, like most particulates, are harmless at normal levels. The health issues don’t come into play until the concentration of these particulates rises too high. Then they start to irritate our bodies and even interfere with our breathing.

When mold colonizes your home, mold spore concentrations can rise dramatically and quickly cause health problems for your family, so it’s important to find and stop these colonies before they can grow in size.

What Mold Needs
To Grow

Mold is often thought of as an invasive plant, but it is actually a living organism that needs food and water, just like any other creature of the world. The difference is that mold needs very little of each to thrive.

As for moisture, humidity above 60% is enough to allow a colony to grow, so a tiny water leak or poorly drained condensation line is enough to cause mold to advance rapidly through your home.

For food, any organic material will do. Dust, drywall, and wood are perfect food sources for mold while also making it more difficult to locate.

Finding Household Mold

Needing little, if any, natural light to grow, mold is adept at spreading on the backside of panels and other areas out of our sight. Mold is especially prevalent in the crawl spaces under our homes.

By nature, crawl spaces make moisture levels hard to control. Many crawl spaces are open to the ground, which allows moisture to evaporate up from the soil and get trapped in the confines of the crawl space, which is a perfect atmosphere for a mold colony.

Another common area to find mold is inside the drain pan under air conditioning evaporator coils in central air systems. Drain pans are notoriously inefficient, which allows moisture to sit long enough to sustain mold growth.

Virtually any place in your home that has a water line running through it and is otherwise undisturbed has the potential to create a home for a mold colony.

Roof, window, and foundation leaks will also cause mold to grow in and on the walls of your home, causing the paint to bubble and staining the walls with its fuzzy or slimy growth.

If an area is relatively dark, lacks ventilation, and has a moisture source of any size, mold will take hold, colonize and begin destroying the structural integrity of that area.

What To Do When You
Find Mold In Your Home

While a mold colony puts your home at risk, it’s the mold spores released from the colony that put your family’s health at risk. Simply brushing at a few square inches of mold growth can cause millions of spores to be released into the air at one time.

Because spores are so easily spread, it isn’t recommended for homeowners to clean up mold colonies on their own.

Professional mold remediation experts set up containment areas and wear protective equipment for good reason. Failing to take proper precautions when removing mold can create a situation far more dangerous than if you’d just left the mold alone.

If you are concerned that your Virginia or DC area home has a mold problem, contact us at Valor Mold Removal for a free estimate. We are the area’s preeminent experts in mold remediation with knowledge and equipment unequaled by any other local mold contractor.