Mold Removal Safety
Posted By Dave on July 3, 2011
Mold removal will be needed once you begin to notice these specific signs within your household:
- Sinus headaches
- Extraordinarily exhausted for no reason
- Non-pattern hair loss
- You feel better having been away from home
- You get headaches on a weekly basis
- Short term memory trouble
Mold removal is highly recommended if you have some of these conditions. It means mold, or maybe even worse, black mold are growing and thriving within your home. Mold has a way of breaking down your immune system to a point where other diseases of opportunity can get a hold and make you sicker and in some instances extremely sick.
Mold removal can be as simple as cleaning up the bathroom or more complicated when addressing water problems from a leak in the plumbing or roof. In general the bigger the area to clean up, the more it could negatively impact your home if you don’t follow proper precautions. For example, you find mold growing behind the toilet tank and bowl. This is an isolated spot and there are no spread out mold areas in the house. Just clean this up with the usual mold cleaner or bleach.
However, if your mold removal problem is inside a wall, you can’t see how much there is. So you will have to estimate at least between the corresponding studs and all the way from ceiling to floor. That’s usually 16 inches by 8 feet and will require careful planning before you tear into it so that you don’t redistribute your mold problem all over the house.
That same wall could also be a bigger problem without you even realizing it, so that’s why caution and planning are so important. The reason is the mold spores. All mold spreads using spores that are sent airborne with the slightest of air currents or touches. The very moment you begin wiping, spraying or tearing down the wall spores will be released all over. They are not visible by the naked eye so you won’t notice them but you could have a slight reaction to their release.
Once the spores are set free through your careless removal efforts, they will float around until they land on a surface that is wet. They will land and stay there. Soon they get some dust or other organic matter along with their moisture, they will blossum and build mold colonies which results in perpetual mold spore releases.
You must contain the area for mold removal to avoid all the mentioned trouble. Containing the area using a closed door and an open window could work, you may need to use plastic and duct tape to build a tent around the work area to keep the mold spores inside and then clean the inside of the tent before taking it apart.
No matter how you contain it, just be sure you are keeping the mold spore risk to a minimum or you have just helped it to survive and keep growing inside your home. The actual cleaning of mold should have you using a mold cleaner or a bleach solution. Make sure there is enough kill time on the surface and wipe it up.
For the bigger jobs, you will be using similar cleaners, but you will want to allow the inner wall to air out, then encapsulate it with a foam available at your favorite hardware store. This encapsulation will enclose any left over mold cells and keep them from spreading and will improve your mold removal effort. Then you just reinstall your drywall.
The important step of mold removal is the planning and containment of the area. The actual cleaning is the easiest step of the job. Just be overly cautious to avoid ongoing mold problems in your home.
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