Lightning Restoration

Today I want to talk about mold blooms. So if you’re not living in an area where there’s high humidity, or you don’t have a very tropical environment, you’re probably not very familiar with mold blooms. But here on the Gulf Coast of Florida, we’re very familiar with them, because they’re extremely common. They happen all the time.

NOW, WHAT EXACTLY ARE MOLD BLOOMS?

Well, imagine going into a property, whether it be a commercial property or residential, and literally seeing mold growing on every surface. It’s in the AC system growing through the ducts. It’s on all the walls growing down, it’s on the cabinets. I’ve actually been in a house before where I saw the actual surface of a metal refrigerator, or steel refrigerator, that had mold growing on it.

Now that kind of contradicts what we know about mold, because we think that in order for mold to grow, it has to have a dead organic material as a food source. Well, I’ll explain that in just a little bit. First, I want to talk about what would actually cause a mold bloom to happen. So typically we have one or two scenarios:

1. – The first scenario being, we had some kind of water occurrence, some kind of water loss inside that property that went unchecked. And because it went unchecked, we had increased humidity levels in there. And those humidity levels reacted with the actual spores that are in the property. Because if you remember correctly, mold is ubiquitous, it’s everywhere. It’s all in this office here with me. So all you have to do is have that increased humidity and it will react with those mold spores and it will start growing.
2. – The second scenario is typically where someone is not utilizing their HVAC system at all, or they’re utilizing it incorrectly, and they’re keeping their AC too high, or like I said, they’re not keeping it on at all for longer periods of time, which causes an increase in humidity in that property, which causes the actual mold blooms to grow because there’s all this moisture there, all the excessive moisture.

HOW DO I PREVENT IT?

Typically you want to keep humidity levels in your property below 60%. Anything above 60% relative humidity lends itself to mold growth. The reason why is because it’s so heavy in the air that it literally sticks on all the surfaces. Just like on the outside of a cold Coke can, you get the condensation. Now, if you’ve got that on a surface of a wall, or cabinet, or the refrigerator, what you get is you get sustained moisture. When you have a sustained moisture problem over a long period of time, you get bacteria growth. Then when that bacteria grows in that water, it lives, it dies, it eats…all those things. That actually becomes the food source for the mold problem, which allows it to grow on any of those surfaces.

When mold grows on every single surface, there’s going to be a lot of things that we can save and a lot of things that we can’t. But either way, it becomes an extremely expensive process, whether it be through replacement or through the remediation and cleaning of everything.

CALL LIGHTNING RESTORATION

So our objective always is to save and salvage as much as we can. So we do exactly that without putting anybody in that property at risk from future mold contamination and mold damage. If that’s something you have questions about, or anything that you want to inquire with Lightning Restoration when it comes to mold removal, water damage, or fire damage, please give us a call. You can reach us at 855-850-LTNG, or you can reach us on the web leave us a message. Be safe out there.