Mold in Your Home: In the Most Unexpected Places

mold in your home

Mold can show up in your house in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times. It’s usually caused by a combination of factors, not just one, and the primary way to eliminate the problem is through effective mold mitigation.

If mold outbreaks happen in the basement or under the kitchen sink, or recurring situations persist in the laundry room, attic, the bathroom, or along a baseboard, it’s important to find the causes of the mold to prevent it’s spreading and then eliminate it from your household permanently.

Treating the surface of a mold outbreak is usually only a temporary solution. It’s what lurks beneath and how it got there that needs to be addressed. The best course of action, then, is to seek the services of a professional mold remediation company—one that backs up their work with a warranty.

Where does mold come from?

A mold situation begins with those small, dark, little dots that, with ample moisture and nutrients, gradually spreads and grows across a wall or on a surface. You may open a closet door and see a dark circular pattern growing on the back wall and can only wonder how it got there?

Mold has to come from somewhere and the reality is, it’s no mystery. Mold found indoors comes from the outdoors. There are many types of mold found in the environment—tens of thousands of species in a wide variety of colors, in fact—and many ways it can get in your home. Mold spores can drift indoors through a screened window or open door, or it can be carried in on shoes, a golf bag, a backpack, or a coat that gets hung in a closet, and then spread through the ventilation system. Mold spores can also enter your home through leaky roofs, foundations, door frames or window casements. Once the spores that are carried in or drift in are exposed to dampness, moisture or water, mold usually begins to grow there. The spores that come in through a leak somewhere in the structure of your house are already primed to grow.

The cause of mold in unexpected places

When mold shows up in an unexpected place in your home, failure to eliminate what caused the mold to grow means that the mold will return as soon as you clean it up. Most people would attribute excessive moisture as the main culprit for the growth of mold. After all, a musty odor and growing mold usually follow the discovery of a leaky pipe under your bathroom sink, water seepage along a basement wall or around a damaged window frame. If you have experienced any type of flooding in your home, whether from a burst pipe or Mother Nature, mold growth will likely follow.

Where does mold grow in a home?

However, you do not have to have a burst pipe or have experienced flooding for mold to develop in your home. Mold only needs a food source and moisture to grow and wreak havoc. That’s why it’s often found in the bathroom or shower walls and surfaces. Finding mold in the back of a closet may mean there is a structural problem that’s causing dampness or humidity. Turn on the exhaust fan while in the bathroom or install a dehumidifier in your house is a good first step in remediating the dampness that’s causing excessive moisture that’s feeding the mold spores.

In addition to moisture, the majority of mold spores prefer a warm environment to grow in. Nevertheless, mold can grow in cooler areas in your house, such as a basement. No matter the temperature, mold will simply not grow without the combination of some moisture and a food source. That’s why in humid weather conditions, the warm air in your house combined with dampness provides the perfect environment for mold to grow in. Finding the right temperature and comfort zone during the warm or damp weather is a must to prevent finding mold in unexpected places in your home.

Airflow is another likely culprit that can lead to the spread of mold in unexpected places in your home. Mold will grow in poorly ventilated areas in the house. If surface areas are well-ventilated then mold spores cannot settle there long enough to begin to grow. Proper ventilation and exhaust fans in the laundry or bathroom can keep your home dry and prevent mold from growing.

What you can do!

If mold begins to appear on surfaces in unexpected places in your home, it may be time to have a professional mold remediation service make an assessment of your property to find the problem. For mold mitigation in the most difficult places throughout your house, Octagon Cleaning & Restoration is the company to choose for the best and most complete mold remediation services. The work is guaranteed and backed up by Octagon’s second-to-none warranty.