Mold prevention is easier (and cheaper!) than mold remediation and removal. Learn how to control moisture, improve ventilation, and maintain your home to prevent mold from growing. In this episode, I share practical strategies to keep mold at bay in your home or workplace.
We discuss how to handle humidity, leaks, and condensation, and provide tips for preventing mold in hard-to-reach areas like crawl spaces and attics. Whether you’re a homeowner, renter, or business owner, this episode equips you with the knowledge to maintain a mold-free environment and protect your health.
TRANSCRIPT:
Today's episode is on mold prevention.
How can you prevent mold from occurring in the first place?
Well, mold needs water to grow.
So fix the leaks fast if you see one.
Keep the shower, the tile in the tub in the shower grouted.
Keep the little crack behind the kitchen sink by the splash guard cocked and grouted so water doesn't drip behind the kitchen sink cabinet.
And if you live in a climate where it's really cold, or if you live in a humid climate, the other way is you can have water.
Mold needs water to grow.
It's a little misunderstanding on that it needs to be humid.
Mold can't grow in humid climates unless there's also a cold surface for condensation.
There really wasn't as many mold problems, ironically, in humid climates like Hawaii and the South, southern United States, until the invention of air conditioning.
Because then you have a cold wall, and if humid air leaks inside from the outside, as it passes through the outside wall, hits the cold wall air conditioning, and it condenses inside the wall, causing massive problems.
And in really cold climates, it's usually the attics, because warm air rises.
And it's the same thing, even if it's really, really dry, then when it hits the bottom of the cold attic that's ice cold, like in Alaska, a really cold northern climate, it condenses.
Again, mold needs water.
Those problems are more challenging.
It's ventilation and vapor barriers.
Kind of complex.
For most mold problems, it's a leak.
Leaky windows, leaky plumbing, and splashing, not taking care of the tile grout.
So what kind of ventilation equipment do humidifiers prevent mold?
Well, the easiest one, turn on the bathroom fan.
If you have to get one of those fans, it runs all the time.
It's really quiet, so you don't have to worry about people turning it on.
Dehumidifiers are really not the solution because a lot of people don't understand dehumidifiers, especially the cheaper ones.
They have a lower limit.
It has to be so humid before they can even do anything, even work.
And even then, back to you get it drier, but it's super cold and you still get condensation, you really need to address is where's the moisture coming from and ventilate to keep the moisture down.
Exhaust, again, bathroom fans, a whole house, a whole house ventilation system, and in some climates, it's common sense.
In some, they've never heard of it, even though they should be using it.
It's a whole house ventilator that's called energy recovery units or heat recovery ventilators that run all the time.
It's like running a bathroom all the time, except you can't just exhaust air.
These allow air to come into the house and they condition it as it comes in, transfer the heat or the coolness from in the humidity from the air being exhausted through the fan to the air coming in from outside, and they keep the house conditioned all the time.
So that's one real good solution.
Even though they're building houses airtight and green buildings airtight, they still skip on the stuff.
Next question in prevention, does keeping my home dry completely eliminate the risk of mold?
What does that mean, keeping my home dry?
You do the ventilation, check, but you could still have leaks that you didn't know about, especially windows.
If you have cracks in the shower or tub grout, you don't see the water getting into the wall.
If you've got a little gap, a missing bit of caulk or grout behind your kitchen sink, the water drips down every time you wash the dishes, you don't see that water.
And you're assuming it's dry.
Just keep my home dry.
Yes, but are you really maintaining it, keeping it dry?
Go outside, caulk around the windows, make sure your siding's in good shape, your roofing's in good shape.
Next question, how do I prevent mold after a flood?
Or if I get a pipe leak, or the dishwasher overflows all of a sudden.
If you have a sudden leak, that's the toilet explodes or the dishwasher explodes, it happens, its pipes just burst.
And the reason is because the city has to keep a high water pressure for you to get water flowing.
Sometimes things fail.
If that happens, call your insurance.
If you have homeowners' renters' insurance, they'll cover having a professional dry stuff out fast.
Call them right away because you want to get stuff dried as fast as possible.
How long does it take for mold to grow?
It's a complex question.
You will hear stuff cited like 24 to 48 to 72 hours.
There were so many variables.
What kind of mold is a big variable?
Some are fast-grower, some are slow.
What temperature is it?
I once inspected in a house where it had a department, and it was during the Christmas vacation where the downstairs tenant, my client, was gone.
Upstairs, the pipe burst just dumped water throughout the whole unit.
It was so much water it tripped the fuse breaker.
So, when we walked in, it was ice cold.
No mold at all, zero, even though it had been two weeks, because it was like a freezer, it was like 45 degrees inside the house.
So temperature factor, as soon as you see a leak, fix the leak immediately.
You want to prevent mold after a flood, you've got three days.
After that, just start tearing stuff out and assume you have mold.
It helps to get a moisture meter.
If you get a moisture meter, Home Depot Lowe's cheap one, 30 bucks, put the pens into the wall of the wood.
You can tell how effective your drying is, how well it is.
If it's been a day or two and things are still soaking wet, your walls or your wood, tear out the drywall, the wall board, so you can get in there and dry out the wood.
If you don't tear out the wall, it's going to grow mold.
Anyhow, you might also cut holes in the wall to get some fans in there.
Once mold starts to grow, shut the fans off.
It's too late.
You're in the mold remediation and just blow in mold around the house everywhere.
If you start to see mold, it's too late.
Just shut it all down.
At that point, it's a mold remediation job and not a drawing job anymore.
Last question, are there mold-resistant materials I can use when building?
Absolutely yes.
Some people will say they're mold-resistant materials.
They're basically non-organic materials, meaning cement board.
Mold can't eat cement.
So it's not at that it's mold-resistant.
Don't be lured into mold-resistant materials that are treated with an antimicrobial.
Those will grow mold.
Green board for bathrooms is an example.
You can tell how many times I've seen green board grow more mold than you could possibly imagine.
Because even though it's treated and made to go in bathrooms, it's still paper, it's organic.
And given time and being wet all the all the all time for a while, for years, it will grow mold eventually.
And it's only on the surface, these treated materials, not the back end or the middle.
So with the whole thing gets wet, mold will find a way.
So it's non-organic.
I talk a lot about how to basically how to build a mold, a house that can't grow mold.
In my book, What Your Builder Should Know, step-by-step on everything drywall, use steel studs instead of wood.
Basically, you're trying to get rid of the organics.
It's not that you're treating it to make it mold resistant.
You're building with stuff that mold can't grow on if it gets wet in a natural way.
That's it for today.
Next time, we'll talk about some health and safety topics.
You know, how do you tell if mold is making you sick?
Is mold dangerous for pets?
What's the best way to protect myself while cleaning?
Until next time, thanks for listening.
If you have questions, go to healthylivingspaces.com.
Ask me a question there or book a consultation.
I would love to help you one on one.
Certified by ACAC • 20+ Years Experience • Author of Mold Money