Montgomery Decor

A proper mold inspection is becoming a top priority for more and more people every year, and mold awareness is growing rapidly through enormous amounts of information provided through books, television, and especially the internet. The first step to preventing or stopping health problems caused by mold is the invaluable mold inspection; the mold inspection will tell you if you have a mold problem to begin with, how serious is, and will then you lead you to the steps wherein you identify the types of mold and eliminate them.

The way to a really effective mold inspection is perhaps through a licensed mold inspector. A licensed mold inspector can be easily found by means of a quick internet or phone book search. In the meantime, however, your ears and your eyes will do wonders for you. We said before that mold grows best in damp, warm places; wherever you have had a flood, or even a leaky faucet, therefore, should be immediately searched. The inside of your windows should be searched. Your bathtubs and showers should be searched, and your roof, and, if your home is made of stucco, the stucco itself. Mold gathers where wood and paper has become wet. The tiles of your shower may be bristling with mold underneath. And those aren’t the only places to search – virtually any area of your living environment which may have become damp in the past or may become damp in the future needs to be thoroughly checked. You can tell mold by its black or green color, and you can smell its mustiness in the air.

On the other hand, there are sometimes substances in homes which look like mold but are manifestly not, so that removing them is a costly waste of time. Such substances may include a sap that will sometimes grow on attic rafters when the conditions are very hot. It forms in little spheres, usually tan-colored or bright brown. This is not mold! Another example is foam insulation, when, when it ages, can have a sort of gross appearance that some people mistake for mold. A more complex example is something called thermal or soot tracking. Thermal or soot tracking occurs when moister goes through a process of condensation on walls and ceilings. The walls and ceilings are cooler than the air, which, as it moves across them, gathers sooty particles and debris, leaving a sooty, greyish pattern behind. Thermal or soot tracking often occurs in homes where lots of candles are burned, or where a fireplace is used regularly. It is important to distinguish between real mold and substances which look rather frightening but are really harmless. Once you have learned the extent, if any, of the mold problem in your home through cautious mold inspection, you can then begin to get rid of it.