Home & Garden Home Improvement

Beware of Hidden Mold

Molds are a chunk of the natural environment that share humans love of the home environment. The only thing lacking for mold to grow indoors in moisture. Provide moisture and you have a very hardy pet. They exhibit similarities to bacteria and plants, but truly they are neither a plant nor bacteria. They belong to the fungi kingdom. Molds reproduce through tiny spores and these spores are invisible to naked eyes. They float through air indoors and find their way into every nook and cranny of your home, even inside walls, behind cabinets, under crawl spaces, and into attics. One of molds favourite hiding places is inside AC units and ducts. When you install wall paper they sit on the wall as you cover the microscopic spore, and stay dormant under the wall paper for 20 years till moisture enters the picture.
Hidden mold causes more serious health hazards and also damages the structure of the building and furniture more because you do not address the issue. The health hazards are so serious that mold sensitive people face terrible problems such as runny nose, itchy eyes, continuous sneezing, breathing difficulties, rash on skin, and more. Sounds bad but not terrible you say? Give these symptoms a try day and night, night and day for a few years and tell me it is not terrible. Constant allergy is terrible all by itself, but allergy in turn will rob you of sleep, and may result in damaged mucus membranes that will in turn result in more colds and sinus infections, and in general make you miserable.
As molds grow in hidden places and you happen to suspect it by the moldy smell of a building, or increasing health problems. Act immediately and call a mold testing company to send out a mold inspector. Also contact your doctor if illness is experienced.
In a building inspection it is difficult to trace the source. Look for water damage or leakage problem. Subsequently, look for the top ceiling tiles, the backside of the carpets or pads, etc. Do not spare the areas in the walls around the pipes for leakage problems, or the wall surface behind the furniture. Stand under the AC register as the AC unit first turns on and see if you smell anything.
Inspecting for hidden mold problems is a daunting task even for properly certified inspectors. Investigation of concealed molds also requires caution as investigation entails agitating potential mold growth sites. For instance, taking away wallpaper can lead to a substantial release of spores.
No mold inspection professional or remediator can guarantee to find all hidden problems, even with special tools and methods expecting a human to find all organisms living in hidden places is not reasonable. But if health complaints or odor lead you to strongly believe that you may have concealed mold problems, your best remedy by far is to contact your doctor and also to hire an experienced, trained, certified mold professional to inspect for it and provide detailed written information on how to correct any problems found.



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