We Need to Talk About Mold

Today is the last day of National Safety Month, and it wouldn’t be right to let it pass without returning to everyone’s favorite topic: mold.

We talk about mold a lot in our photo galleries and other writeups of work we’ve done; after all, it’s a huge source of structural problems and one of the first warning signs to customers that something is wrong. We get tons of calls from people who don’t think there’s a water problem, “but there’s this smell.” The smell is almost always mold, and the mold is almost always wreaking havoc.

But today, I came across a recent CleanSpace encapsulation we did up in Prudenville that really brought home the dangers of mold. A man had inherited his parents’ house after his dad died, and the inspector found a raging mold problem in the crawl space. It was bad - maybe one of the worst I’ve seen in the hundreds of photos I look through every day. But it was worse for him, because his dad had died from complications of a respiratory illness, as his mom had before. And he himself had breathing problems.

And he realized that the house he’d grown up in had probably killed his parents.

Now, it’s not that surprising that no one noticed. The crawl space was only two feet high and it had a dirt floor, so it automatically looked dark and gross. No one had a reason to go down there - it’s not like it was big enough to store anything - and if there were no structural issues, like sinking floors, why would they think, “The house is probably riddled with mold.”

So in honor of safety month, and in honor of our customer, who made sure to get the house encapsulated before it could cause any more health problems for the future owners like it did for his family, here are some facts about mold that could literally save your life.

1) Mold grows easily.

All mold needs is a humid environment (over 70% relative humidity) and a food source (anything organic, including dirt and paper and wood) and it’s off to the races. It can start to grow within 24 hours of a single spore attaching to an organic surface, and can colonize in a week.

2) Mold is small.

It’s even smaller than you’re currently thinking. A single mold spore is invisible to the eye. By the time mold is visible - think of the little spots you see and think “oh, mold” - it’s already colonized and what you’re looking at is probably millions of spores. By the time mold is visible, it’s already a big problem.

3) You can’t kill mold.

All of those WikiHow articles that teach you how to get rid of mold with bleach? Or vinegar, or boric acid? They’re wrong. You can’t kill it, and all removal methods like scrubbing with bleach accomplish is sending the spores into the air. All you can do with mold is neutralize it with a special product, and render it dormant by controlling the moisture in the area.

4) Mold is dangerous to your home.

Mold likes organic material. It often attaches to fiberglass insulation (the paper backing is a favorite snack) and wooden beams, and systematically destroys them. This can lead to warping and rotting of support beams and destroy your home’s structural integrity.

5) Mold is dangerous to you.

Mold spores spread by launching into the air and traveling through your home, looking for new snacks and humid environments. As you breathe them in, they can nest in your lungs and exacerbate existing conditions like asthma, or even create respiratory problems.

6) There is hope.

While you can’t kill mold, experts can take action to render it dormant and take away its power. We use a product that effectively encapsulates mold, preventing it from spreading, and have a variety of products like vapor barrier and dehumidifiers designed to eliminate ambient moisture and render your home inhospitable to mold.

Mold isn't just what you see when you find that half-eaten container of strawberries that got shoved to the back of the refrigerator last month. It thrives in a lot of common below-grade environments, and it could be putting your home - and you - in danger. But we can help.