subject: What Is Involved In Removing Mold From Your Home [print this page] What Is Involved In Removing Mold From Your Home
"A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams."
- Anonymous.
A house maybe built with "love and dreams", but to ensure its continued existence you do need a house, and make confident its "walls and beams" are taken well care of. As important as the purchase or construction of a house is, there's no denying the significance of maintenance. In the midst of painting walls and repairing the plumbing, one bit of maintenance that often escapes notice until it becomes aggravating to the residents' health is mold removal. In this short article, we will describe what is mold, why should you remove it and how to go about the procedure.
What is mold?
A mold is a fungus that grows in the form of multi-cellular filaments called hyphae. Smaller fungi that grow as single cells are called yeasts. A connected network of these tubular branching hyphae is called a colony. They can be of thousands of various types and can survive extremes of humidity and temperature. However, they do want warmth, humidity and a food source such as the cellulose in wood to survive.
Why should you remove mold?
Mold development in buildings is a common phenomenon. Although in few quantities they just grow the ambient dust, in larger amounts they can origin important health issues. Some casual problems are asthma attacks, allergic reactions, irritations of the eye, nose and throat, infections, sinus congestion, and other respiratory troubles. Certain molds excrete toxic compounds called mycotoxins, some of which can even be fatal in high concentrations. All this necessitates the removal of mold from your home at constant intervals.
How do remove mold from your house?
The first step in mold removal is to assess the amount of infestation. Visual inspection can only find out visible and odor-causing molds; sometimes more intrusive methods are needed. They include looking under furniture, checking behind wallpaper or paneling, checking in ventilation duct work, exposing wall cavities, etc. The dual goals of this step are to understand how to correct the moisture difficulty and keep apart contamination safely and fluently. Sampling - air, surface and bulk - may be performed to get more data of the mold infestation, such as types affected.
After assessment, the next step of remediation involves blocking the moisture source and removing the accumulated mold. Although small infestations can be treated with sunlight and household cleaners, major infestations may require the removal of the affected areas. Another expert remedy that has gained currency in current times is the use of dry fog. Using an EPA-approved chemical that is harmless to humans and pets, dry fog kills the mold without causing any injury to the concerned building. Recently, dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) is being used to keep apart mold from wooden and cement surfaces.
After killing the mold, the chemicals and proteins causing discomfort do not go away. Therefore, cleanup and removal are effective steps in the remediation procedure. After it is completed, another sampling may be performed to approve the efficacy of the categorical procedure.
