While we do our best to make sure that both our belongings and our homes stay clean, mold is sometimes a threat that we cannot always detect early on. A lot of times an odor has to develop in a room or it has to start growing visibly on the wall before we are aware that there is a problem. While there may not be a lot that you can do to detect hidden mold in your home as it just starts to grow, there are plenty of things that you can do to keep mold out of your house and off of your belongings.
A lot of people have a bad habit of tossing wet and dirty clothing or towels into the bathroom closet and just leaving them there until the closet gets full of dirty clothes. Not only can this cause mold to start growing on the floor in the closet, but the longer the clothes are left there, the mold will spread to the other clothes that you threw in on top of the wet ones. Washing rags or towels that have become mildewed together with things that are not mildewed does not usually do anything but cause the ‘clean’ clothes to become mildewed and smelly, as well. The best thing to do is empty the dirty clothes from your closet as often as possible; do this every day if you do not have a separate container to put wet items in. Keep mold from growing in the bottom of the closet on the floor by using a plastic laundry bin.
Clothes that are packed too tightly together in closets can also become moldy due to high humidity and lack of air circulation. Some closets have vents installed specifically to keep air circulating in the closet, but if you pack your clothes in there until you just can’t squeeze anymore in, you are defeating the purpose of the vent. Not all molds need significant warmth to survive, but it definitely helps. Your clothes are all the food that they will need and high humidity will provide the moisture.
Baby bottles that are strangely shaped can also become moldy or mildewed, but this can be prevented by washing the bottles, rinsing them, drying them as much as you can, and then putting them in the freezer until they are needed again. Mold does not like cold temperatures and while it can remain dormant in cold weather, if you just washed the bottle, odds are good that there is no mold on it.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
New Jersey mold damage restoration and other states and cities such as
Connecticut mold remediation companies across the united states.
Friday, September 28, 2007
How to Sell a Moldy Home
Selling a home that you no longer want or need can be a hassle all by itself, but when you add mold contamination to the mix, it just gets ugly. It is not easy getting rid of a home that is contaminated with mold at the price that you want and a lot of times, you have to lower the price that you ask for it before you can even get anyone to come near it. There is hope, however, for those of you who are willing to do a little work.
If you do happen to find a buyer, you should make sure that an environmental inspection clause is included in the sales contract. This will assure the buyer that they will have a two to three week period where they can have an inspector come to take a look around the property and examine it for mold or any other hazards that could possibly exist. If they or the inspector see that mold exists on the property without testing, then the only test that should be performed is to determine whether the mold is toxic. Even if the mold does not happen to be toxic, it still needs to be removed due to the structural damage that it can do to the building materials the home is made out of. Drywall that becomes infected usually needs to be replaced and so does any wood or other materials.
Whatever you do, do not try to hide the mold contamination from your buyer by trying to cover it up or remove the mold superficially. Even if you remove the mold off of the surface of a piece of drywall, odds are good that the whole depth of the sheet has been contaminated because drywall is a porous surface covered with paper both on the front and the back. If your buyer discovers there is mold on the property and you mentioned nothing about it, they may suspect that you are hiding other things about the home, as well, and you will have lost your buyer.
You should also have a clause in your sales contract that says that neither you, your lender, or your real estate agent is responsible for any complications caused by mold after the home is sold. Listing all mold and water damage that has been done to the home in the past and what you have done to fix the problems should be enough.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
flood water damage restoration chicago and other states such as
South Carolina mold remediation companies across the united states.
If you do happen to find a buyer, you should make sure that an environmental inspection clause is included in the sales contract. This will assure the buyer that they will have a two to three week period where they can have an inspector come to take a look around the property and examine it for mold or any other hazards that could possibly exist. If they or the inspector see that mold exists on the property without testing, then the only test that should be performed is to determine whether the mold is toxic. Even if the mold does not happen to be toxic, it still needs to be removed due to the structural damage that it can do to the building materials the home is made out of. Drywall that becomes infected usually needs to be replaced and so does any wood or other materials.
Whatever you do, do not try to hide the mold contamination from your buyer by trying to cover it up or remove the mold superficially. Even if you remove the mold off of the surface of a piece of drywall, odds are good that the whole depth of the sheet has been contaminated because drywall is a porous surface covered with paper both on the front and the back. If your buyer discovers there is mold on the property and you mentioned nothing about it, they may suspect that you are hiding other things about the home, as well, and you will have lost your buyer.
You should also have a clause in your sales contract that says that neither you, your lender, or your real estate agent is responsible for any complications caused by mold after the home is sold. Listing all mold and water damage that has been done to the home in the past and what you have done to fix the problems should be enough.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
flood water damage restoration chicago and other states such as
South Carolina mold remediation companies across the united states.
Cell Phone Water Damage Indicator
While I did not pay over $100 for my cell phone, a lot of other people have paid hundreds for theirs and have ended up dropping them in the toilet, the bath tub, the kitchen sink, or even the river or a number of other bodies of water large enough for a phone to be submerged in. There are a lot of places you can get your cell phone wet, but what you probably might not realize is that your cell phone’s warranty does not cover water damage. Manufacturers are even beginning to install these stickers on the insides of the phone in not one, but at least two different places so that if your phone gets wet, you cannot tell the repair technician that it did not. The technician will know if your phone is water damaged simply by the fact that the sticker on the inside of your phone has changed color.
This might be a great thing for manufacturers having to deal with a lot of returns by consumers dropping their phones in the pool and claiming the phone was never wet, but unfortunately for honest consumers, these stickers are so sensitive that they often trip when the humidity is just too high wherever you might be. There is a powdered dye underneath the sticker and when moisture builds up inside the phone, the sticker and dye both get wet and the dye disperses on the sticker, changing it. One of these is typically located on the battery compartment, but another (usually more difficult to access) is located on the circuit board of the phone.
So, how do you get around this? Well, if you want to make both stickers ineffective, you will have to break into your phone quite skillfully, but it can be done. The first sticker is not difficult to reach. Take a piece of scotch tape with a satin finish and cover the sticker with it. If your phone suddenly stops working for no apparent reason, remove the tape and take it back to the manufacturer. I doubt this will help you much if you drop your phone in the bath tub, because it is not likely that a piece of scotch tape will keep the sticker from getting wet, but it will help protect it from moisture due to high humidity. As for the location of the other sticker, you will probably have a hard time getting to it because it is located on your circuit board.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
North Carolina Sewage Damage Cleanup and other states such as
South Carolina mold remediation companies across the united states.
This might be a great thing for manufacturers having to deal with a lot of returns by consumers dropping their phones in the pool and claiming the phone was never wet, but unfortunately for honest consumers, these stickers are so sensitive that they often trip when the humidity is just too high wherever you might be. There is a powdered dye underneath the sticker and when moisture builds up inside the phone, the sticker and dye both get wet and the dye disperses on the sticker, changing it. One of these is typically located on the battery compartment, but another (usually more difficult to access) is located on the circuit board of the phone.
So, how do you get around this? Well, if you want to make both stickers ineffective, you will have to break into your phone quite skillfully, but it can be done. The first sticker is not difficult to reach. Take a piece of scotch tape with a satin finish and cover the sticker with it. If your phone suddenly stops working for no apparent reason, remove the tape and take it back to the manufacturer. I doubt this will help you much if you drop your phone in the bath tub, because it is not likely that a piece of scotch tape will keep the sticker from getting wet, but it will help protect it from moisture due to high humidity. As for the location of the other sticker, you will probably have a hard time getting to it because it is located on your circuit board.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
North Carolina Sewage Damage Cleanup and other states such as
South Carolina mold remediation companies across the united states.
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