When mold eats up your bread, it’s an inconvenience. But when mold eats up your house, you have a problem on your hands. Environmental factors can lead to many different complications in your home. Mold is one that not only can harm your home, but it can also put strain on your health, not to mention your bank account. At Benchmark Services we offer an array of environmental testing and we want to help keep your home safe. Here are some tips on how to prevent, detect, and get rid of mold.
Prevention
Preventing mold begins with reducing moisture and controlling the humidity in your home. Some daily household functions that often promote moisture are malfunctioning vents for stoves and laundry facilities. You can measure humidity levels with a moisture meter and check to see if your home is in the recommended 30 to 50 percent range.
Another prevention tip that seems pretty obvious is to clean up spills immediately after they happen. The recommended timeframe is 24-48 hours but cleaning up right after will yield the best results. It should go without saying that thoroughly cleaning each spill can avoid lurking and hidden moisture that can result in mold.
There are types of flooring that help prevent mold from growing in certain rooms that naturally have more humidity. For bathrooms and laundry rooms, it is a good idea to have hard surface floors versus carpet. Moisture that seeps into carpets will slowly attract mold and damage the carpet.
The last prevention tip is to keep a constant air flow throughout your home. This will in turn keep moisture levels down and will help mold from growing all over. When there is no air flow in a house, the moisture gets trapped inside increasing the chances of mold growth.
Detection
You have done all you can do and there is still mold growth in your home. This calls for tips to detect when mold is appearing and growing. Sometimes it is as easy as seeing the mold for yourself, but that is not always the case. Mold can find itself under your carpet and trapped inside of your walls. When this happens and you cannot see the mold, a strong musty smell can be an indication that there is a mold problem. Mold is often confused with dirt on some surfaces. In this case, you will want to clean the infected area and if the dirt does not clear away or reappears, that is most likely mold. Being observant while doing your normal cleaning can be helpful to detect mold growth.
Action
Once you have tried to prevent mold growth, but it has appeared anyway, there is only one thing to do. Get rid of it! There are some DIYs you can find on the internet to remove mold but first you want to determine how severe the mold is.
If the moldy area is small or confined, it may be worth the effort to do it yourself. On the other hand, if the mold is in multiple places and growing rapidly, that is where the experts take over. Here at Benchmark Services, we offer an environmental package that includes mold samples and testing. From there we will help find the perfect solution for your home. Not only cleaning up the mold but making sure it doesn’t reappear.
Mold is not something that we can get rid of completely, but we can gear up with the resources available to fight against mold in your home. Benchmark Services is here to give you the tools necessary to keep your home in tip top shape!
