What are signs of mold in your house? If you want to know what the signs and symptoms of mold in house are, then keep reading to get more information on this matter.
You’re sure that tonight is going to be one to remember. You’ve spend weeks preparing for this dinner party, dressing your home up to the nines while preparing a sumptuous feast and ensuring that every last detail is just perfect. It’s been a long time in the making and a lot of work, but as your guests file in, it looks like it will have all been worth it. That is, until someone notices that you have a nasty mold infestation on your hands. Just like that, the whole tone of the evening has changed irrevocably.
Tonight is now surely one to remember – but not in the way that you’d hoped. If only you’d been able to pick up on the signs and treat that infestation sooner.
Few things have the potential to ruin your home faster and to a more devastating effect than a mold infestation. Not only does mold have the potential to ravage the structure itself, but if you can imagine the negative reaction of your guests, just think of what a mold infestation will do to your property value.
That’s why, before you and your guests are left wrinkling your noses, you’ll want to sniff out an infestation by searching for these key signs and symptoms of mold infestations in your home.
What Are Symptoms And Signs of Mold In House?
Allergy Alerts
If you often experience allergies, you don’t need to be told that the experience can be miserable. All that coughing and sneezing can leave you feeling exhausted.
That being said, if there’s a silver lining to such a strong allergy attack, it may be the fact that it could actually help you detect a mold infestation in your home. The very factors which set off certain allergies are often those that correspond to a mold outbreak as well. That obviously doesn’t mean that a case of itchy red eyes and the sniffles should send you scrambling and panicking about a potential mold infestation in your home.
On the other hand, if you find other aspects of this list that correspond to factors at play in your home, and you’re suffering an allergy attack all the while, you may want to get your home checked for mold sooner rather than later.
This is especially true if you find your allergy symptoms worsening every time you come home and fading when you leave.
Some of the most common allergy symptoms that are connected to a mold infestation in the home are coughing, sneezing, itchy or bloodshot eyes, sore throat, and other symptoms commonly associated with the common cold, flu, and exposure to cold and moisture.
Visual Clues
Some of the most telling clues that you might have a nasty mold infestation on your hands are visual in nature. You will want to be on the lookout for small dark spots, especially those which happen to be clustered together in areas which are moist, dark, or both. Mold grows quite well in areas which are both moist and dark, making these areas the first you’ll want to check when it comes to locating a mold infestation in your home.
In addition to those innocuous-seeming black spots, mold infestations can also take the form of white, purplish, grayish, and greenish spots.
Unfortunately, far too many homeowners overlook these vital visual clues. After all, some small dark spots, while a telltale sign of mold, still aren’t necessarily much to go on, particularly when other things can look and act like those dark spots. Oftentimes, homeowners are given to think that small dark spots are simply dirt, not recognizing their mistake until it’s too late.
As such, even if you feel relatively certain that those dark spots in your home are just dirt, you’ll want to do your due diligence and check. If it really is dirt, it won’t take long – and if it’s something more, you may have saved yourself a world of trouble by catching a mold infestation before it gets worse.
Mold Odor
That part about guests being left wrinkling their noses in the wake of a mold outbreak in your home wasn’t just for effect. Foul moldy odor is one of the clearest and most distinctive signs that you have a mold infestation in your home.
Moreover, it is one of the easiest signs to detect, in part because there’s every chance that you already know what a “moldy” odor smells like. It isn’t uncommon for food to go bad by accident from time to time, after all, and when it does, it often comes with a moldy smell.
There’s another reason why being able to “sniff out” mold infestations is so important – namely, that there’s every chance you’ll be able to “scent” danger before you can see it. If the mold infestation in question is growing inside your ceiling or walls, or in other obscured areas, there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to see mold growing until it’s too late. You can still smell it, however, and while a strong moldy odor is a homeowner’s nightmare, it’s better to hold your nose and bear it now than be alerted by your guests “wrinkling their noses” later.
Water Problems
As stated above, one of the biggest signs that you may have a mold problem on your hands is finding spots popping up in areas which are dark and dank. Moisture is instrumental to breeding mold. As such, the darker and more moist an area may be, the greater the risk of a mold outbreak.
Water Leaks
In particular, water leaks are one of the leading potential causes and thus signs of an impending mold infestation. As we’ve already touched upon, water can be a huge risk factor, and that’s especially true when it comes to something as potentially dangerous as, say, a plumbing leak.
In a situation such as that, you have what is for all intents and purposes the perfect storm of factors necessary to precipitate a mold infestation. The dark entrenched areas in which pipes and plumbing apparatuses are kept are a dark, enclosed environment which can be perfect for trapping moisture and creating a breeding ground for mold in the event of a leak.
If you do detect a plumbing leak in your home, therefore, you’ll want to be sure to check for a potential mold infestation immediately.
Previous Flooding
This brings us to the subject of on-site floods. If you have had flooding problems in your home, either as the result of a natural disaster or a particularly bad plumbing leak, your home may be subject to water damage. If this is the case, one of the biggest dangers at hand is the fact that these conditions are, as with small-scale plumbing problems, perfect for fostering mold infestations.
As such, if your home has been hit by floods in the past, you will want to get your property checked for mold. What’s more, in the wake of a plumbing or flooding problem, you’ll want to dry the affected space out as quickly as possible.
Knowing what are signs of mold in your house and how to detect potential signs of a mold infestation can make all the difference in helping you save your property.
Avoid an odious fate and take your time by sniffing out and addressing mold infestations in time.
