How to Prevent Mold After Water Damage – Avoiding Health Issues

Accidents and natural disasters happen. If your house is still standing even after a particularly bad storm, you’re in luck. Unfortunately because the most common natural disasters involve water, you could experience other problems – particularly mold, which if left untreated, could spread and damage your property. It’s not just your property that’s at risk here. Living in a mold infested property can cause serious long term health complications. Knowing how to prevent mold after water damage can help avoid further property damage, along with possible health issues.

The conditions necessary for mold to grow – a temperature between 41 and 104 degrees, food, and moisture. So once you have a water damage, you can be sure the environment is conducive for mold to grow. It’s only a matter of time, if you don’t take these steps.

How to Prevent Mold After Water Damage

Step 1. Quickly Dry the Affected Area

It goes without saying that because moisture is the most important component for mold growth, the first thing you should do is take it out of the equation. The measures you’ll take depend on the severity of the water damage. Small areas will probably dry if the room is well ventilated. Larger areas may need some motivation – so maybe turn on the fan, or air conditioner. You want to make sure everywhere’s dry before the first 48 hours are done. After 48 hours mold will become more difficult to remove.

Step 2. Watch Out For Warning Signs

Continue monitoring the surface on the off chance some stray mold survived and is trying to breed others. Mold often produces a musty odor, so make sure you’re extremely sensitive to that. Continue monitoring for at least one week. Only relax if you don’t notice any musty odor, after a month’s long vigilance.

Step 3. Check Outdoors

Mold sometimes begins outside your home before spreading indoors. Anything from mild rainfall to heavy storms can trigger outdoor mold to grow. And it usually starts at the foundation level of the house, so it can be difficult to spot. If you notice water gathering, perhaps you don’t have good drainage, it is possible a mold colony is forming in your house. So your immediate action should be to get good drainage. Once that is done, the nice cold air outside should dry out the foundation walls.

In Conclusion

Do you know how to prevent mold after water damage? If you don’t think you can vigilantly monitor mold growth in your home, you can replace your dry walls with mold resistant insulators. They contain moisture and mold inhibitors, meaning they’ll render the environment uninhabitable for mold growth even when there’s a water damage.