Mold Removal Tips
A flooded home can leave you feeling frustrated, especially when mold is involved, but what can you do? Are you worried about the dangers of black mold to you and your family?
Advertisement Take back some control with these do-it-yourself mold removal tips.
Follow these three tips to ensure that your do-it-yourself mold removal project will run smoothly and safely.
Prepare Your Home
If the wiring in your home has been affected by mold, you’ll want to turn off the main power. When you’re done disinfecting your home, enlist the help of a professional electrician to make sure it’s safe to turn the electricity on again.
Check for leaks in the water system before you spray your home down. Rent a hose that allows you to spray a soap and water solution together.
Spray down every moldy item in your home from floor to ceiling.
If you haven’t spent time with heavy cleaning chemicals before, test yourself out by disinfecting a small area of your home to start.
If the fumes affect you too much, hire a professional mold remediator to disinfect the rest of your home.
Be Thorough
Mold removal requires you to be as meticulous as possible. After the mold has been washed away, use cleaning pads or a stiff brush to scour each surface.
You can use a commercial cleaner to scrub moldy surfaces after they’ve been sprayed, but any non-ammonia detergent will work just as well. Try a mixture of 1 ½ cups bleach* with a gallon of water for a simple, homemade solution. (Update: We no longer recommend using bleach for mold.)
Furniture, walls, floors, ceilings, and heating and cooling registers and ducts must all be disinfected with a solution that has a quaternary, pine-oil, or phenolic base.
To be safe, get rid of a foot extra of drywall above the flooding level. Call in a professional to get any area that you aren’t able to reach on your own.
Dry each area for at least two days. If you don’t, the mold will return.
Soft materials such as rags, clothes, paper and even heavily affected carpet will retain mold spores even after disinfecting and drying. Throw these items away in sealed bags.
Protect Yourself
Advertisement When you’re ridding your home of mold, the cure can be as dangerous as the illness.
To keep yourself safe from both mold and cleaning solution fumes, keep your home well ventilated throughout the cleaning. Take frequent breaks to get some fresh air.
Buy a mask or a particle remover respirator at a hardware store to protect you from mold spores released during the drying process.
Because respirators don’t protect you from fumes coming from disinfectants such as bleach, spend as little time as possible around these chemicals.
Always wear gloves when you’re handling anything containing mold and dispose of the gloves when you are finished with your project.
Disinfect Your Home
When you’re finished doing all you can to disinfect your home, you may want to hire a licensed contractor to check your work.
A professional can help you find any mold that you missed or assure you that your do-it-yourself mold removal project was a success.
Further Recommended Reading
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I just found mold over all my clothing, in my closet. I layed them out to dry and washed them. Now what should I do? I dont want to put them back in my closet, I want to throughly clean it first…any suggestions?
I HAVE MOLD THAT IS BLACK LOOKING AROUND MY BASEBOARDS IN THE BASEMENT AFTER A FLOOD. HOW DO I KNOW IF IT IS BLACK MOLD OR NOT. I KNOW IT IS BLACK IN COLOR BUT DOES THAT MEAN IT IS THE REAL DANGEROUS BLACK MOLD
me & my family are having a very bad mold
problem @ the place we renting.the sealing of
bathroom started getting black first,then the rest of the house as we went into winter.i did not know the dangers of mold until now.also now the walls is molding up.i spoke to land lord bout it,guess what!? (“its not my problem,i dont want to hear nothing.i just want my place the way you got it or i keep your deposit”.now! how does that become my problem?please?i need to know what the safest & easiest way is to sort this “fungus” out.thanks guys.
I have mold in my place. After reading the symptoms, I have several of them.
Red eyes, headaches, breathing and even sinus now which I have never suffered from.
One thing I don’t know now, is it due to the mold with the sinus infection, I now have ear infection and with that bleeding in my ear.
Can it be the cause of the mold in conjuction with the sinus infection?
Mold re-mediator is necessary in home for make safe and healthy for your family. Our company provides mold clean up services in USA.
I have been living in this apartment for 5 yrs every summer every day I mop up 2 to 3 buckets of water off the wash room floor.. I called maintance and all they did was take two days in the apartment running in and out not fixing anything at any time. so I decided to just mop it up. the water is coming from the air conditioning unit which sits surrounded by wood is it likely that I have mold in this room no water runs down the hole in the floor it runs all over the floor help
I found this extremely helpful i have found a yellow growth on my kitchen wall under the worktop i now have a lung infection and a skin irritation which we assumed was an incurable palmo plaster pustular psoriasis having tried to remove the mould myself after waiting four months for the council my skin condition flared up my hands swelled up i had a severe case of what i thought was a six week flu im very sick fro this
There was a minor flood in my apartment a few days back, and I noticed mold growing in the corner of the most affected spot. It’s on carpet that I can’t take out, so would I be able to scrub it and dry it best I can, and place a fan next to it? Or should I call a remediation expert? Thanks in advance.
allied247restoration.com
Editor: spell check changed mold to mud
Thanks, I’ve fixed it.