Summer Is The Season Of Mold
With summer here, thoughts turn to good weather, long, sunny days, another school year finished, and, of course, a chance to take a nice vacation somewhere. But along with all the good of summer, there’s a little bad as well.
Summer’s good weather comes at a cost. Humidity, the heavy feeling of moisture in the air, becomes more pronounced in Maryland during the summer season. And when this happens, the heat of summer, combined with that damp air, provide a nurturing environment for the last thing you want to see in a home, mold.
A Problem For The Home
Mold itself is already in your home, as it is already everywhere. Tiny, invisible spores of mold constantly float through the air. The only way to ensure a home is permanently free of mold is to take the kind of precautions that NASA or the CDC would, with comprehensive air filtration systems, decontamination procedures, and multiple air locks to protect a building. Otherwise, every time you open a door, window, or have any kind of hole in your home, such as the vent that expels heat from your dryer, or even the chimney, you are letting mold spores in.
Normally, mold spores, like dust, won’t do much of anything when they enter a home. They will float and settle, and that will be the extent of their activity. However, what mold is looking for is the proper environment in which to start a colony. Different molds have different requirements. One type of mold, for example, requires very little moisture, but it does require an organic surface on which to settle and “feed.” This type of mold is one most of us are familiar with, as it appears on bread when we leave it unattended for too many days.
Other types of mold require more specific conditions, such as a lot of moisture, darkness, and warm temperatures. A humid basement in summer, for example is the kind of environment this mold would take to. Other, more serious mold, such as the “black mold” that can cause a very severe form of lung infection, require actual water in the environment in order to infest a home, which is why only consistently leaky or flooded basements will play host to this type.
What To Do
If you don’t have mold in your home, you can take steps to reduce the chance of an infestation even further. If your home’s environmental system has a dehumidifier, use this function during the humid days of summer. If it doesn’t, a portable dehumidifier will do a similar job in your basement, which is where you want to concentrate your efforts.
Air conditioning throughout the home can also help with reducing humidity, and thus reduce the chance of a mold infestation. But the most important thing you can do is ensure that no large, recurring amounts of water get a chance to settle anywhere in your home. This includes the basement and areas of your home you may not visit at all, such as a crawlspace. Unlike plants, mold, being a fungi, do not require sunlight in order to survive, so the darker, damper and more inaccessible an area is, the more inviting it may actually be for mold.
In the event that you do find mold in your home, you should take steps to eliminate it. One of the safest and surest ways to do this is with an experienced, professional mold remediation team. AA Action Waterproofing has the tools and the staff to handle this kind of situation, so if you have any question or concerns about mold in your home, we’d be happy to address them.