We all know mold causes health damage, but one mold in particular called Stachybotrys chartarum can be extremely dangerous. Stachybotrys is the mold that most people think about when they think of “black mold” and for good reason.
Stachybotrys (sometimes called simply “stachy”) grows on water damaged wood and paper, but where it does not grow is plastic, the tiles in our kitchens and bathrooms, and concrete. Wood and water that has gotten wet and allowed to dry that way will become infected with the mold and it will spread to other areas in your house. It requires almost constant moisture in order to grow and thrive. Wet clothing tossed in the backs of closets and forgotten about is often found to have mold growing upon it. Stachy mold is usually a greenish-black, wet, and slimy when found and it requires cellulose products like paper, wood, and cotton in order to grow long term. Although the spores of wet mold do not easily enter the air, if the mold is allowed to dry out, it becomes more of a health hazard.
While stachy mold is not the only kind or even really the most common kind of mold found growing in these conditions, it is still one of the most dangerous kinds of mold to allow in your home or office because it kills brain cells and has similar symptoms to Alzheimer’s Disease. If you or anyone in your home are experiencing disorientation, memory loss, and the inability to think logically at times and are not at the age to be at risk for Alzheimer’s, a test for mold should be done to determine if this is the cause.
Common health complications due to exposure to this mold include asthma, pneumonitis, skin rashes, bloody noses, headaches, and other respiratory problems. Prolonged exposure can cause internal bleeding of the lungs, kidney failure, and liver failure. Pulmonary emphysema can also be caused by prolonged exposure to this and other black molds.
This mold is particularly likely to show up in homes or buildings that have been flooded or extensively water damaged and areas where constant leaks are present, such as water pipes and hot water heaters. Just touching this mold can cause skin rashes and because of the excessive health risks associated with it, it is often recommended that only trained mold removal specialists should be used to remove it from a home or building where it is present.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Connecticut water damage restoration and other states such as
New Jersey Water Damage Restoration companies across the united states.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Protect Your Water Pipes in the Winter
People who are spending their first winter in their new home and have never owned a home before might not think about the kind of damage a burst water pipe can cause. New homeowners don’t often think about this very real problem and it can lead to some very expensive consequences.
Water pipes in the home that are not properly insulated can freeze and burst in the winter if the temperature drops to below 20 degrees. Even a crack that is only one-eighth of an inch can let out over 250 gallons of water each day and the water damage this can cause can potentially be catastrophic. Your floors, clothes, carpet, and personal items will be damaged and as the water dries up and spring returns, it will leave you with a more serious problem. This problem is mold and when water damage to your home isn’t repaired correctly or not repaired at all, it can grow in your home and make your entire family become sick over time. While most insurance policies do not cover mold, water damage is usually covered to some extent. Preventing water damage to your home that is covered can help you prevent the mold damage to your home that isn’t covered and while any kind of water damage can cause this mold to grow, but burst frozen pipes are one of the easiest things to prevent.
One of the first things that you should do during the winter is cover your indoor water pipes with insulation. Where possible, make sure warm air can get to your pipes during a deep freeze. Do this either by opening the cabinets under your kitchen and bathroom sinks or placing a space heater in the room with these pipes. If you’re going to use space heaters, be careful and don’t leave them unattended for long or where they can possibly catch things on fire. Don’t use extension cords with space heaters and keep anything that could catch fire preferably over 5 feet away or you could be facing a fire damage problem instead of water.
Disconnect any garden hoses and make sure cracks in your home’s foundation are sealed so cold air, water, and snow can’t get inside to your pipes. Keeping a small bit of water running through hot and cold water faucets can also mean the difference between a busted and an un-busted pipe.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Houston Fire Damage Water Restoration Contractor companies and
Los Angeles Water Damage and Restoration Services.
Water pipes in the home that are not properly insulated can freeze and burst in the winter if the temperature drops to below 20 degrees. Even a crack that is only one-eighth of an inch can let out over 250 gallons of water each day and the water damage this can cause can potentially be catastrophic. Your floors, clothes, carpet, and personal items will be damaged and as the water dries up and spring returns, it will leave you with a more serious problem. This problem is mold and when water damage to your home isn’t repaired correctly or not repaired at all, it can grow in your home and make your entire family become sick over time. While most insurance policies do not cover mold, water damage is usually covered to some extent. Preventing water damage to your home that is covered can help you prevent the mold damage to your home that isn’t covered and while any kind of water damage can cause this mold to grow, but burst frozen pipes are one of the easiest things to prevent.
One of the first things that you should do during the winter is cover your indoor water pipes with insulation. Where possible, make sure warm air can get to your pipes during a deep freeze. Do this either by opening the cabinets under your kitchen and bathroom sinks or placing a space heater in the room with these pipes. If you’re going to use space heaters, be careful and don’t leave them unattended for long or where they can possibly catch things on fire. Don’t use extension cords with space heaters and keep anything that could catch fire preferably over 5 feet away or you could be facing a fire damage problem instead of water.
Disconnect any garden hoses and make sure cracks in your home’s foundation are sealed so cold air, water, and snow can’t get inside to your pipes. Keeping a small bit of water running through hot and cold water faucets can also mean the difference between a busted and an un-busted pipe.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Houston Fire Damage Water Restoration Contractor companies and
Los Angeles Water Damage and Restoration Services.
Mold: The Benefits We Forget
Although molds growing unchecked can be harmful to human health, molds that are grown in laboratories for specific purposes have been used extensively for many years in order to improve the quality of life.
Penicillin as we know it today was discovered accidentally when Alexander Fleming saw a plate of Staphylococcus aureus had become contaminated by a blue-green mold. He noted that colonies of the bacteria next to the mold were being destroyed by it; he soon after grew a pure culture of the mold and found that penicillin killed not only Staphylococcus, but many other bacteria that cause disease. He named it penicillin, published the results of his experiment in 1929, and the medical community has been using it ever since.
Molds are also used to make different kinds of cheeses, including bleu cheese. Bleu cheese in particular is rumored to have been discovered by accident and since molds are not generally associated with good food, there is good reason for this assumption. Early cheeses were aged inside caves and these places often contained the perfect conditions for mold to grow in.
Without molds, we would have neither bread nor beer and even butchers inject mold into animals before they butcher them for preservation. Aspergillus oryzae is used in Japan to convert the starch in rice into sugar in order to make the traditional alcoholic beverage of sake. Red yeast rice is also made by being cultivated with a mold called Monascus purpureus and was used as a natural food coloring before the discovery of modern chemical food coloring.
Agriculturally, molds also help to decompose different kinds of natural debris such as taking care of the leftovers from forest fires and begin building a base for new plants and trees to grow on. Decaying organic matter is also eaten by mold and thus they are the natural recyclers of the world. If it is organic in origin and needs to be gotten rid of, overtime mold can accomplish this task.
Something most people outside the medical community don’t realize is that if a medicine’s name has the ending of “mycin”, it was made using mold
Mold only becomes a problem if it begins to inhabit the same places that humans and their domesticated animals inhabit. If they remain in a checked status, they do us next to no harm and as shown here, can even provide civilization with many benefits.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
water damage restoration contractors and
Mold Remediation companies across the united states.
Penicillin as we know it today was discovered accidentally when Alexander Fleming saw a plate of Staphylococcus aureus had become contaminated by a blue-green mold. He noted that colonies of the bacteria next to the mold were being destroyed by it; he soon after grew a pure culture of the mold and found that penicillin killed not only Staphylococcus, but many other bacteria that cause disease. He named it penicillin, published the results of his experiment in 1929, and the medical community has been using it ever since.
Molds are also used to make different kinds of cheeses, including bleu cheese. Bleu cheese in particular is rumored to have been discovered by accident and since molds are not generally associated with good food, there is good reason for this assumption. Early cheeses were aged inside caves and these places often contained the perfect conditions for mold to grow in.
Without molds, we would have neither bread nor beer and even butchers inject mold into animals before they butcher them for preservation. Aspergillus oryzae is used in Japan to convert the starch in rice into sugar in order to make the traditional alcoholic beverage of sake. Red yeast rice is also made by being cultivated with a mold called Monascus purpureus and was used as a natural food coloring before the discovery of modern chemical food coloring.
Agriculturally, molds also help to decompose different kinds of natural debris such as taking care of the leftovers from forest fires and begin building a base for new plants and trees to grow on. Decaying organic matter is also eaten by mold and thus they are the natural recyclers of the world. If it is organic in origin and needs to be gotten rid of, overtime mold can accomplish this task.
Something most people outside the medical community don’t realize is that if a medicine’s name has the ending of “mycin”, it was made using mold
Mold only becomes a problem if it begins to inhabit the same places that humans and their domesticated animals inhabit. If they remain in a checked status, they do us next to no harm and as shown here, can even provide civilization with many benefits.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
water damage restoration contractors and
Mold Remediation companies across the united states.
Mold Prevention in Your Bathroom
Your bathroom is the room in your home that most people associate with cleanliness, but it’s one of the worst places for you to allow mold to propagate. Along with the kitchen, this is one of the most common places for mold to be found in the home. What can you do to prevent mold from growing in your bathroom? Here are a few tips.
Check the caulking around the bath tub or shower stall and make sure it isn’t cracked, broken, or even missing in certain areas. If you feel cold air coming in through a hole in the caulking, you should re-caulk it immediately.
It’s not uncommon to find mold growing around the base of your toilet, especially if the toilet has overflowed often in the past or worse, if you have carpet in your bathroom instead of tile. Carpet is generally a bad idea in a bathroom unless you’re very diligent in cleaning up spills of water as soon as they’re made.
You want a vent or a fan in your bathroom so that heat and moisture can escape to the outside of the house. Mold grows not only on the floors of the bathroom, but also on the ceilings where water has been absorbed due to the steam of taking a shower being unable to escape the room.
If you can see mold on the outer surface of your bathroom wall, odds are that you’re looking at a mold problem inside the wall, as well, and cleaning the mold off the outer surface of the wall isn’t going to be enough. If you truly want to get rid of all the mold, you’ll want to replace mold-contaminated building materials, except for wood supports. This includes plywood, carpet, papered sheetrock, plasterboard, and etcetera. If your bathroom has carpet in it and you find mold growing anywhere near the floor, replace the carpet.
Whatever you do, don’t try to cut corners by painting on top of your mold problem. Mold eats paint like candy and it’s nowhere near an effective solution. Even paints containing mildicides are not effective, because these are not strong enough to kill toxic mold infestations.
If you leave moist dirty clothes or towels on the floor in your bathroom closet often, expect mold to grow there. Toss your clothes in a plastic clothes basket instead of directly on the floor and this is one of the best things that you can do to prevent mold in the bathroom that most people don’t think about. We tend to let damp or even wet towels stay on the floor indefinitely, especially if we live in busy households. Clean out your dirty clothes bin often, especially if the clothes are wet.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
water damage restoration companies and
Dallas Residential Water Damage Restoration Contractors.
Check the caulking around the bath tub or shower stall and make sure it isn’t cracked, broken, or even missing in certain areas. If you feel cold air coming in through a hole in the caulking, you should re-caulk it immediately.
It’s not uncommon to find mold growing around the base of your toilet, especially if the toilet has overflowed often in the past or worse, if you have carpet in your bathroom instead of tile. Carpet is generally a bad idea in a bathroom unless you’re very diligent in cleaning up spills of water as soon as they’re made.
You want a vent or a fan in your bathroom so that heat and moisture can escape to the outside of the house. Mold grows not only on the floors of the bathroom, but also on the ceilings where water has been absorbed due to the steam of taking a shower being unable to escape the room.
If you can see mold on the outer surface of your bathroom wall, odds are that you’re looking at a mold problem inside the wall, as well, and cleaning the mold off the outer surface of the wall isn’t going to be enough. If you truly want to get rid of all the mold, you’ll want to replace mold-contaminated building materials, except for wood supports. This includes plywood, carpet, papered sheetrock, plasterboard, and etcetera. If your bathroom has carpet in it and you find mold growing anywhere near the floor, replace the carpet.
Whatever you do, don’t try to cut corners by painting on top of your mold problem. Mold eats paint like candy and it’s nowhere near an effective solution. Even paints containing mildicides are not effective, because these are not strong enough to kill toxic mold infestations.
If you leave moist dirty clothes or towels on the floor in your bathroom closet often, expect mold to grow there. Toss your clothes in a plastic clothes basket instead of directly on the floor and this is one of the best things that you can do to prevent mold in the bathroom that most people don’t think about. We tend to let damp or even wet towels stay on the floor indefinitely, especially if we live in busy households. Clean out your dirty clothes bin often, especially if the clothes are wet.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
water damage restoration companies and
Dallas Residential Water Damage Restoration Contractors.
Easy Ways To Maintain A Smoke Free Fireplace
Quite a few homes have fireplaces, but not all of them are fit to be used as they are because they have not been cleaned in so long that when you do try to use them, it fills the house with smoke. This can do a lot of damage to the inside of the home, including ruin the paint on your walls, your curtains, and discolor your carpet. It is also a health risk, since breathing this in is not good for anyone, but the elderly, people with allergies, pets, and children are especially affected. Fortunately, though, in most situations you can make a fire that will not smoke up your house without much trouble as long as you follow a few rules.
The damper of your chimney needs to be open before you do anything. Burn some paper or other easily combustible materials in the fireplace, because you want to warm the chimney up. Cold air in the chimney is will push the warm air down and cause the smoke to fill up the room.
Open up the windows in the house and make sure that there is enough air circulating to ignite the fire. A home that is insulated well might not have enough of a draft to allow the wood to catch on fire.
You should also have some fireplace bricks underneath the grill to add some more air circulation to the process. More draft in the fireplace will make it easier for the fire to ignite.
The top of the fireplace also needs to be cleaned out regularly, since anything that gets stuck in it like leaves, sticks, bird nests can keep the smoke from being able to escape and so it floods back into the house, which is exactly where you do not want it.
You should also have the fireplace cleaned by a professional cleaning service if possible, since a layer of creosote is likely built up on the inside of the chimney. This is a tar-like substance that results from burning wood in the fireplace and if your chimney has not been professionally cleaned before and you have lived in your house for many years, then it is time for it to be. Creosote can catch on fire and cause the whole house to burn down, so having it cleaned out is essential.
To keep your fireplace functioning the way that it should, you need to know how to use it and take care of it and by the time winter gets to you, you will be able to enjoy your fireplace once again.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
South Carolina flood water damage restoration and other states such as
Connecticut water damage restoration companies across the united states.
The damper of your chimney needs to be open before you do anything. Burn some paper or other easily combustible materials in the fireplace, because you want to warm the chimney up. Cold air in the chimney is will push the warm air down and cause the smoke to fill up the room.
Open up the windows in the house and make sure that there is enough air circulating to ignite the fire. A home that is insulated well might not have enough of a draft to allow the wood to catch on fire.
You should also have some fireplace bricks underneath the grill to add some more air circulation to the process. More draft in the fireplace will make it easier for the fire to ignite.
The top of the fireplace also needs to be cleaned out regularly, since anything that gets stuck in it like leaves, sticks, bird nests can keep the smoke from being able to escape and so it floods back into the house, which is exactly where you do not want it.
You should also have the fireplace cleaned by a professional cleaning service if possible, since a layer of creosote is likely built up on the inside of the chimney. This is a tar-like substance that results from burning wood in the fireplace and if your chimney has not been professionally cleaned before and you have lived in your house for many years, then it is time for it to be. Creosote can catch on fire and cause the whole house to burn down, so having it cleaned out is essential.
To keep your fireplace functioning the way that it should, you need to know how to use it and take care of it and by the time winter gets to you, you will be able to enjoy your fireplace once again.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
South Carolina flood water damage restoration and other states such as
Connecticut water damage restoration companies across the united states.
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