Licensed Mold Assessment Consultant - License #MAC1516
When to inspect for mold
One good thing about mold— is if you have a mold problem, you can see it. A visual inspection is all that it takes to find mold in your house. A few situations should make you look for mold problems in your house.
- Water damage. If your house or building is flooded, the roof leaks, or a broken pipe sprays water all over the kitchen or inside a wall, you must inspect for mold. Any place that got wet and was not quickly dried (within 24 to 48 hours) could become contaminated by mold.
- Purchasing a new home. There is no way to know what kind of water damage may have happened in the house you are planning to buy. The only way to find out if mold is present is to do a mold inspection.
- After a house has been unoccupied. If a house has been closed up and unoccupied for months or years, humidity could have built up inside and caused mold to grow. This is especially a problem in warmer areas with high humidity.
After mold remediation. If you have gone through the often expensive and difficult steps to deal with a mold problem, regular mold inspections are a good idea to make sure you really got rid of it all.- You see some mold. If you notice some green, blue, black, or white stuff growing in your house, do a mold inspection to ensure you find it all. It might not be restricted to one location.
Mold is a fungus, and like all fungi, it thrives in moist places. Mold spreads by emitting spores, and microscopic particles that are often as small as a single cell. Spores float around in the air until they land on a surface. Mold spores are everywhere, outdoors as well as inside your house. It would be practically impossible to remove all mold spores from a house without installing some kind of massive industrial clean room filtration system.
Luckily, mold spores only form mold when they land on a moist surface. That means that if you can keep the interior of your home dry and keep the "Relative Humidity" level below 60%, you will avoid any mold problems. The best way to prevent mold in your home is to clean up spills, repair leaks in your roof, plumbing, or HVAC system, and make sure your kitchen and bathroom are properly venting moisture out of the house.
The International Association of Indoor Air Consultants (IAC2) is the non-profit, certifying body for home and building inspectors who have fulfilled certain educational and testing requirements including those in the area of indoor air quality.