Is Your Home Making You Sick?

Mold is something that we don't always think about. Maybe it ruins your plans for an epic cheese plate or pops up on the bread you were about to use for a sandwich. Maybe you've seen it in a dark, damp corner of your basement, but you rarely go down there so you just leave it be. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about mold as more than a passing nuisance.

Generally, you only respond to a mold problem once you see it, but by that time, you're looking at millions of mold spores – entire colonies. A single mold spore is invisible to the naked eye but it doesn't take long for them to multiply and take over, since all they need to survive and thrive is moisture and an organic food source, like paper or wood.

While you might not be thinking about mold, it's still affecting your life in more ways than you know. Outside of breaking down wooden beams and creating a generally unpleasant, smelly environment, once you have a mold problem it's everywhere. Especially the air.

Mold is known to exacerbate allergies and asthma and create respiratory issues in people exposed to it over time. For example, I recently moved out of an apartment with a suspected mold problem and, after years of having a constant low grade cough and cold, can already feel a difference in my breathing. It's worrisome to know that what I thought was just a bad immune system could actually have been caused by mold in my home. Now multiply a few years' exposure by how long you've lived in your home and just ignored that musty smell.

We had a customer a few years ago who called us to take a look at the crawl space in his recently deceased parents' home. It was riddled with mold – one of the worst we've seen – and he told us that both he and his parents had struggled with respiratory illnesses for decades, to the point that his father had died of pneumonia. He wondered how much of that had to do with the unaddressed crawl space.

But what can you do? It's almost impossible to remove mold, especially by yourself. The DIY bleach and scrubbing methods listed all over the internet can actually do more harm than good as the scrubbing serves to send the spores airborne so they can travel through your home. Eradicating mold depends on containing it and then starving it.

After containing the mold via our Mold-X spray, we tackle the problem by removing what mold needs most – moisture. Waterproofing systems can be installed to redirect standing water in a basement or crawl space, but one of the most important aspects of that is a dehumidifier. Our SaniDry systems are top of the line and come in different sizes with different capacities, depending on your home's needs.

It's important for your home, but also for your health, to handle mold issues as soon as you're aware of them. Call us today to schedule a free inspection and breathe easy.