How To Stop Mold Before It Starts

Jamie: 00:00:01

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you’re a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. Welcome back to another episode of Thoughts from the Crawl Space.

Today we’re going to give you some tips on how to spot signs of mold before it becomes a problem. Houses are just susceptible to moisture. Entry air brings a lot of moisture with it, and so with that can come mold.

And so we want to give you some tips today. How to spot it, some of the warning signs of it, what to do about it, when is it a big problem that needs professional help? So let’s jump right in.

What is mold and why is it a concern? Number one? Well, most of us know a lot about mold.

There’s a lot of myths about it as well, but essentially, it’s a type of fungus that thrives in a damp environment. And it’s a problem because it is a health problem.

Allergies, it can cause respiratory issues, and it can even cause structural problems to your house. Now, what is the level of mold that would be considered acceptable? Well, that’s a great question. Number one.

There’s no national standard that says mold can only be a certain level. And the reason for that is because everybody’s immune system is a little bit different.

How you respond to mold might be different than even your spouse and, you know, even. Even your pet or your kids.

I will say kids, the elderly and pregnant ladies are more susceptible to health problems related to mold than anybody else. So that’s why it’s a concern. It can damage your health.

And if, if left unchecked in certain areas, it can certainly do damage to wood structures and cause major problems either in a crawl space or a basement or even inside of a wall. So that’s thing one, that’s what it is and why it’s a concern. So what are some early warning signs of mold?

Well, when you think of warning signs, you’re looking for evidence that there could potentially be a bigger problem. All right, walls get scuffed up, you’re going to see scratches, you’re going to see dings, things like that.

What you’re looking for is any kind of discoloration on your walls, ceilings, or floors. Could be black, could be green, could be white, patches. Typically, mold will come in one of those three colors.

It can also be yellow, and so the color doesn’t necessarily Determine the type of mold that it is. But those are colors that are typical of what you would see with a mold infestation. So odors. Do you have a good sense of smell?

That’s a great way to check. You go into the basement, you walk around into a utility room maybe, and you like that smells musty. So if you have musty odors, you have molded.

It’s just, that’s the way it is. And so don’t dismiss those thoughts or those smells that you have when you, you go into a certain room.

Some people are much more sensitive to it than others. And so if you sense something, don’t ignore that thought. Have it followed up on in some way.

So if you see any signs, as we mentioned, the colors, black, green, white, even yellow. Non visual signs are the musty odors. Persistent dampness or unexplained water stains. Like what is that stain coming from?

Maybe you have stains starting to appear on your basement ceiling like your finished ceiling, and you don’t know what it’s from. Perhaps you got a tub or a shower or a sink above it that would be dripping. It’s developed a leak over the years.

And if you have persistent moisture, that’s a perfect opportunity for mold to start growing. Mold only needs a three things. Mold needs air, water, and food, right? Well, you can’t do anything about air.

Air’s around us, we got to breathe it to live. You can’t do anything about the food because we need building materials to build a house. But you can do something about the moisture level.

And so if you have a persistent moisture leak, that is that third wheel, so to speak, that’s going to help mold to grow and that you’ll need to get rid of.

So if you see persistent leaking now you’re seeing staining, there’s a pretty good chance you probably have some mold growing in an area that you don’t see and that needs to be followed up on. So what are some high risk areas in the home? Here’s a few. Wherever there’s water, right?

Bathrooms, kitchens, utility rooms, attics, crawl spaces, and areas near plumbing or H vac systems.

From doing home inspections for 20 years and doing mold remediation and mold surveys for several years, crawl spaces are probably the number one area that we see mold. The older way of building crawl spaces included vents that supposedly would allow air to flow through and limit the moisture level in the house.

And that can work under the right conditions.

But sometimes you don’t have the right conditions and sometimes you have hot, humid air Outside, it flows into a crawlspace, which is cooler because it’s below ground. And it condenses. And now you have more moisture than you would have otherwise.

A side note, many building codes are leaning now toward a conditioned crawl space. So a crawl space with no venting around the perimeter, and they’re insulated, the walls and the perimeter joist around it are going to be insulated.

And then you’re going to have ductwork going through there normally, anyhow, to heat your house and cool your house. But it will also have registers in the crawl space to effectively make that a conditioned space.

Now, if you go that route, you want to make sure you have the proper vapor barrier on the floor. Because moisture will naturally migrate up from wood or from dirt.

And you don’t want that getting into your home and creating problems in your house or even the attic. And so you need a tough vapor barrier to keep that out. So that’s a professional installation and question. But back to the point.

Crawl spaces are very susceptible to mold just because they’re unchecked, Just because you’re getting hot, humid air in there. And you’re not getting a ton of circulation, naturally. And so that’s why it happens. And so crawl spaces, attics are probably number two in a house.

And that’s just simply because of the same reason they’re left unchecked. You got varying degrees. You got heat loss, you got air loss coming up through the ceiling. And so that creates the moisture.

And then we got hot air leaving out. You got cold air. In the winter, especially now, we’ve got condensation, and it’s just the process repeats.

So crawl spaces and attics are definitely definite areas where you’re going to find it. And then the areas especially around and under bathrooms. So obviously, you can see something in a bathroom.

If you have a tub leaking or whatnot around the wall, you might see some black start growing. But look underneath, especially if it’s an unfinished basement. And you’re able to see under the plumbing, under the fixtures.

Go down there and take a look and see if there’s any signs of staining on the subfloor or the joists, because that’ll be a great sign if something’s starting to happen. If wood is black initially, that’s just staining. But if it is continually wetted and black, chances are it’s going to be deteriorated.

And you’re going to need to change something, rip something out, and then you’re going to have bigger problems. So it can also indicate one of the things that leaks in bathrooms, probably more than anything, are toilets just sits there.

You might not even know it’s leaking. Depending on if it’s caulked or not around the base, the leak is going to go down, so you won’t see it in the bathroom. Floor. Floor.

You might notice your toilet is loose all of a sudden, or there’s squeaky tiles. Or if you have linoleum, it could be discoloration. Usually linoleum, vinyl.

That kind of floor covering will turn like a bluish purple if you have toilet leaks. And so all those things are signs. We got moisture problems and potentially mold problems.

So let’s talk about some environmental factors that encourage mold growth.

Well, we’ve discussed a little bit of it already, but high humidity above 60%, that’s what we end up with in crawl spaces that create that mold growing on the joist. But you can also have it in your basement. We highly recommend a dehumidifier be used in a basement.

Whether it’s finished or unfinished doesn’t matter. And this will help to keep the humidity level down, and it’s going to discourage mold growth.

Remember, the one thing that we can control out of the three, we can’t control the food for mold, and we can’t control the air, but we can control the moisture. So make sure you’re limiting the moisture.

Stop any plumbing leaks, Use a dehumidifier and reduce that to preferably down below 50%, usually between 30 and 50% too dry. And then you’re dealing with different issues as far as comfort and everything. But keeping that humidity level down makes a big difference.

So this is something you will notice different in a razy rainy season or a dry season. Right now around here, it’s starting to get drier because we’re getting getting on into fall, and the air is just cooler and drier.

Whereas in spring, early fall, definitely summer, it’s humid. And you’re going to need to use dehumidification more, because in the winter around here, we most of the time are going to use a humidifier.

If you use that to put moisture into the air. And that’s okay up to a certain percentage.

You’ll notice on humidifiers that are built into a furnace system or a central air system, typically those don’t go above 50% on the settings. And the reason for that is you don’t want it too humid in there. So between 30 and 50% is a pretty standard way of setting those.

So it doesn’t get too humid in the house, but just be Aware of certain rainy seasons or humid summers that you’re going to have that happening. Now another thing that can happen with in winter in really cold temperatures. Now it’s extremely cold outside and it’s warm inside.

And so again we have condensation, especially around weak points in insulation or such as windows and doors.

And so you can get mold growth growing on the insides of your windows because of the condensation coming down the windows combined with the hot moist air inside. And so it’s something you need to keep an eye on. It can build up, it’s fairly easy to clean up, especially on vinyl windows.

But it’s something that if left unchecked can start growing pretty much anywhere. You’ll notice a lot of times that rooms that aren’t, aren’t lived in much. It’s maybe a storage room. You have things against the wall.

If you pull furniture and boxes or whatever you have stored away from the wall, you may notice something growing on the wall right there. And, and it’s just light, fuzzy mold growth just because it’s not getting air movement.

We talked about how we can’t control the air as far as taking it away, but we can control making sure we have movement and that helps get moisture out of there a little bit. So we’ve talked about some high risk areas in the home, we’ve talked about environmental factors. And another thing, just some DIY tips.

Be your own inspector. What are we doing in there? We are looking behind furniture, as I just mentioned. Look under the sinks or in corners for hidden mold.

You think about a couch against the wall. It naturally can potentially have mold growing behind it. Well, think about a corner.

Now you got it crammed, going both ways and it can’t get out of there. And so corners are susceptible to it.

One thing is to take a flashlight and hold it flat against the wall and just kind of shine it like that or just straight down as you walk along it.

And that can really reveal if you have something growing on your wall, you’ll see something where it’s just shining it like normal straight at the wall. You’re not as likely to see it. It’s usually faint right at first.

And so you gotta have some advantage, advanced techniques with the flashlight to find it. And that’ll help you to, to see what’s going on.

So if you find something, oh, one other place you’re going to see it quite a bit would be under sinks. And this is simply because if there’s leaks under sinks, a lot of times we don’t see them until it’s been leaking a while.

You could have stored things down there that leaked. And it’s just generally your sink base in bathrooms or kitchens just, just takes abuse from leaks and such.

So one little warning about being your own inspector. If you do see especially large areas of mold, don’t touch them. When you start disturbing mold, trying to clean it up, it will make it more airborne.

It excites the spores and they go everywhere. So you really want a professional that knows what they’re doing if you’re going to have a large area.

Now, one thing to note is that the EPA recommends any area less than 10 square feet. So this would be roughly like 2 foot by 5 foot is seemingly small enough for normal home household cleaning to take care of.

So keep that in mind if you find some small areas. If you feel comfortable, you don’t have to call a professional for that. Anything bigger, like a whole room or a whole wall or something like that.

We highly recommend getting a professional professional involved to guide you at the very least, or to do it themselves to get done right. So when to call a professional. So you should know your own limits.

If you don’t feel comfortable going in the attic or the crawl space, that’s certainly understandable. Some days we don’t feel comfortable doing that, but we have to anyhow.

Call us, call a professional and have them inspect parts of your house on a regular basis. We highly recommend yearly maintenance inspections on a house just for the main areas, just for this reason.

So nothing gets started, nothing gets growing out of control before it can be taken care of. But after you’ve done what you can do as your own inspector, know your limits. Know when to hire a home inspector.

If you want, you can use moisture meters or thermal imaging cameras. That’s something inspectors are going to have.

They are not cheap, but it’s something that you can use to help do a kind of advanced check if it’s something you want to do.

But a professional inspector is always going to have those tools and know how to use them and know where to look for signs of it in a worst case scenario.

So obviously you want to get it inspected before you buy it, but primarily we’re talking today about after you own it, how to do regular maintenance checks to check for mold. So you know what they say about health. The best medicine is good prevention. So how do you prevent this mold from starting?

We’ve touched on a few key points so far, but a couple of things. Any leak that comes up, fix it promptly. Improve ventilation with exhaust fans and using dehumidifiers. Dehumidifiers again below 50%.

Check your attic for any signs of roof leaks. All it takes is one nail popping up through a shingle for water to seep into to create potential mold problems in the house. Improving ventilation.

If your attic or crawl space continually gets mold, it gets cleaned up, it comes back. You need better ventilation at the very least of some sort of. So look into getting that fixed and then some low cost upgrades.

Cleaning gutters, sealing the windows. Why seal windows? Well, 98% of the moisture that gets into your house comes in through air movement.

Now this is obviously unless you have a major leak coming in, but this is sneaky how water gets in through air movement. And so seal the windows. You can add mold resistant paint or drywall for high risk areas.

Now, if you don’t take care of the other stuff, paint and different kinds of drywall, you’ll usually see it as purple or green. They have very limited effect if you haven’t stopped the moisture source to begin with. But those are some things you can do to help.

But primarily especially for a basement. 95% water problems in a basement come from roof and yard runoff.

So let’s make sure the gutters are working right and the downspouts are actually discharging the water away from the foundation and not right next to the foundation, which makes the problem worse. So those are some things you can do to prevent moisture and in turn helping to prevent mold from accumulating in your house.

So let me touch again on the health and safety aspect of this. This especially for vulnerable groups like children, elderly or those with asthma, the mold in those situations can build up in those systems.

It can be a little by little by little. It’s not all at once.

We highly recommend getting a blood test if you suggest you have some kind of mold contamination in the house that has affected your health.

If you have chronic illness, asthma, headaches, things like that that you maybe didn’t have before, might be time to go get checked out to find out what you can do about it or what actually is the problem. One thing you won’t find out when you call our company is medical diagnosis. We’re not doctors.

We can’t diagnose if you suspect something, we suggest going to a physician to get a blood test and then we can help you with remediating problem that you may have in your house. So cleanup.

What if you have a small area, I mentioned earlier that up to 10 square feet is considered acceptable for a homeowner to clean up themselves. So what’s the best way to clean up mold? Well, there’s a few options. Number one, you can simply use soap and water.

The best thing to do with mold is to actually remove it. And with this, you’re cleaning it, you’re removing it. Another product you can use is white vinegar. Spraying it on there neutralizes it.

You can wipe it down, you’ve removed it. Number three is hydrogen peroxide.

The product we use in mold remediation, especially in attics and crawl spaces, is a really heavy duty 20% mixture of hydrogen peroxide. I would not recommend that. That takes special precautions to use. But you can use the stuff you buy, that’s 3 or 5%.

Spray it on there, and that’s a good way to do it too. One type of chemical I would not use a mold cleanup is bleach. Bleach is something like 95% water. What caused your mold in the first place? Water.

Now you’re adding more water, more fuel to the roots, especially on porous surfaces like wood. If you add bleach, you’ll probably kill the stain right away, but it doesn’t kill the roots. And now you’re adding moisture to the problem.

So what do you think is going to happen? It’s going to come right back.

Another point on cleaning your old mold, if you see it start growing in an area and you wipe it off, and this is an area that’s exposed, it gets plenty of airflow and it comes back. Likely you have a problem inside the wall. So you could have a pipe that’s leaking, you could have a leak from a window, some, something like that.

So if you wipe it off and it comes back, and you wipe it off and it comes back, you got a bigger problem. You need to call a professional and find out what’s going on before you keep fighting it.

And it keeps growing and getting bigger and bigger inside the wall. So what is the cost of ignoring mold? Well, mold remediation can get expensive. And when I first got into it, I kind of wondered why.

As soon as you start doing the work, you, you really know why. There’s standards you need to follow, there’s personal protection that you need to wear.

It’s hard work, it’s dirty work, it’s dangerous work because you’re always breathing in stuff. You might be laying in water on and on and on.

So mold remediation, I can’t give you a price over the phone, so to speak, but just know that you’re talking thousands of dollars most of the time for Mold remediation. So how can you avoid that? Well, do some of the steps we mentioned earlier. So just some cautionary tales.

If you have a water event, let’s say your downspouts take a turn, have a mind of their own, and they start filling up the window wells and it runs in your basement and runs down the wall under the carpet, and you decide to just run some fans and dry this out, leave it. Chances are you didn’t dry it well enough. Whenever we have a water event.

And if you can get that completely dried out in under 48 hours, there’s a really good chance you’re not going to have any problems with mold. If you don’t, it can start growing just that soon, within three to seven days.

If it’s wet, damp, which many basements are, carpet trapping moisture, it can’t dry out. It’s going to grow and it’s going to grow quickly. And then you have a much bigger problem.

When that starts happening, chances are you’re probably going to have to replace the carpet. We’re going to have to tear out drywall insulation, possibly wood framing. And it creates a very unhealthy.

There really is no healthy mold, but it creates the more toxic kinds if it’s let the rot and eat wood and so forth. So that’s a, that’s a just. We’re pleading for you to take action.

If you have a water event, a toilet overflow, it goes through the whole basement floor. It’s probably getting under the tiles, under the linoleum. You’re probably going to have to tear that out of there to probably properly dry it.

So make sure you call us if you have any questions on what to do there. So a couple of myths that I want to end with here on mold. So we. You get questions like, is all mold toxic or is the only bad mold black mold?

Well, no, there are some good molds used to make cheese and wine and beer and such. Mold in toxicity can be multiple colors. Now, typically, it is true that some of the more toxic ones tend to lean toward growing black.

And that’s where you see it on the wall. Chances are, on drywall, if you see black on the outside of the wall, you probably have it on the other side as well.

Not always, but in many kinds that’s the case. So not all mold is visible. And professional testing is often the only way to go. We get frequent requests to test a house for mold.

You simply can’t see anything. We take air tests and it comes back showing a problem. You have it in the walls. Which walls? Well, sometimes that’s hard to tell.

They may have to do some destructive testing to find if they can locate where the problem is. But definitely some myths there about mold. And the big one I already touched on Bleach doesn’t kill mold. It kills the stain. It removes the stain.

But when bleach hits mold, it creates a toxic stew, so to speak, that you don’t want to be breathing in. So that’s why soap and water, white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide are much better options.

So I hope this gave you some tips on mold cleanup, what to look for, how to prevent it. It’s always a big issue, especially when it rains a lot.

Especially if you have those weird events where we got sleet and ice and snow and rain, all that stuff at once. Anytime you get moisture in a basement, it can lead to problems quickly.

Plumbing leaks that are left unchecked, water events that are not properly cleaned up. All those things can affect it. So Share this episode if you have questions on it, please don’t hesitate to call us.

We’d love to help you out if you have questions on it, and we’ll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening.

This week, you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. For more information about Gold Key Inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.