Everywhere you look these days, someone is trying to share a secret with you. Every infomercial on TV and every internet advertisement is full of “top secret” information to enhance your health, get a better mortgage, prevent this or that, or otherwise make your life better. There’s obviously nothing secret about this kind of thing. If it were really secret, it wouldn’t be all over TV and the internet!
So what about mold prevention? You may have heard that mold is a real threat to your health and the integrity of your home, and that it can even affect the long-term market value of your property. Guess what — these things are all true! But they’re not secrets. They’ve been well known for decades, even if a lot of homeowners still don’t know about them.
In terms of prevention, it’s basically the same story. There has been no miraculous mold prevention hacks that have “changed the game” in terms of keeping your home mold free. But good mold prevention strategies are somewhat “secret” in that many homeowners still don’t know about them.
In truth, the secret to successful mold prevention is a simple matter of understanding why and how mold grabs hold in a given home. If you know that mold needs moisture, warmth, and something to feed on (cellophane and other porous materials are ideal, which is why wallpaper has attracted so much mold over the decades), you know the basics of effective mold prevention.
Moisture is actually the most important thing. If you’re able to control the humidity inside your home, and prevent it from getting out of hand, you’re much less likely to ever have a problem with residential mold.
Controlling moisture can be more or less complicated depending on where you live. For instance, if you live in an arid desert climate, you probably have less to worry about in terms of mold (although it still can be an issues, as many documented cases show). On the other hand, if you live in a tropical area with high levels of humidity, mold is almost certain to be an issue unless you’re really vigilant.
And if you live in New Jersey or a comparable state, where hot and muggy summers are followed by very cold winters, moisture can be especially difficult to control. Mold can grow up in the summer when it’s humid, and in the winter when you’re running a humidifier in your home to keep the air from getting too dry.
Routine checks and period visits from a mold control specialist are another “secret” of mold prevention. Professionals use infrared technology and other special tools to ascertain for certain whether you have a mold problem in your home, and if so, what type of mold you’re dealing with. This allows you to design a specific and targeted strategy for dealing with the problem.
Don’t really on secrets or magic solutions to prevent mold in your home. It’s a simple matter of learning the facts and, from there, using a common sense strategy to make sure mold doesn’t become a problem for you and your family.