Tips to Help Prevent Mold in Your Home

While mold can be a good thing – think brie cheese or penicillin – mold in your home is generally to be avoided. Once mold has a foothold, it spreads rapidly and spores are hard to eradicate, so preventing mold from gaining even a toehold in your home is imperative.

Educate Yourself

• Know where mold likes to hide (the back of drywall, above ceiling tiles, in areas around pipes or anywhere else moisture gathers).
• Know what mold looks – and smells – like. Often there will be small white or black dots, a gray or yellow “fuzz”, a musty or sulfuric smell.
• Know what to do if you see mold; look at pictures of toxic and non-toxic mold so you know when to roll up your sleeves and start cleaning, and when to evacuate and call “the dry guys”.

Identify Problem Areas

While there is no such thing as “mold-proof”, you can make your home mold-resistant. If you have a problem area, fix it or at least set up a reminder system to check these areas regularly and find ways to dry them out:

• Leaky attics
• Flooding basements
• Damaged gutters
• Moisture collecting pipes

You may need to do a little home repair to eliminate recurring issues, but it will be worth it.

Ventilate

There are daily activities that generate warm, moist air – which can cling to any surface and cause the perfect conditions for an outbreak of mold.

• Laundry areas should be ventilated – make sure your dryer output hose is directed outside the home and is kept clean and empty of lint.
• Bathrooms should have a ventilation fan installed; this should be used anytime anyone takes a shower or a bath.
• Kitchens also should have a hood fan over the stove that can be turned on when cooking to allow steam to be whisked away.

Consider setting up a humidity monitor and using a dehumidifier to cut down on the moisture in the air of your home. Also make sure air is circulating freely through your home – stagnant air allows condensation to form on walls, windows and even curtains or clothing hanging in closets.

Bonus tip: even your plants are not safe from mold! If you have indoor plants, add a little Taheebo tea to the soil – the oil on the tea is naturally mold resistant and can keep spores from forming and wafting through your home.

If you do end up with mold despite your best efforts, don’t forget – “the dry guys” are only a call away. Our mold remediation specialists can remove mold and help you learn better ways to prevent it from returning.