Mold Can Harm Your House, Not Just Your Health
Monday, December 21st, 2009If your property frequently has high levels of moisture in the air, you could be facing problems to your home and your health. High humidity in your home can lead to an increase in molds which can potentially do harm to your health. A simple dehumidifier (or luftbefeuchter in Germany as I found out) can help to reduce the levels of moisture in the air.However, if you are constantly needing to run a dehumidifier, you may need to get your home checked for structural issues. Alternatively, if you are looking to buy a home, discovering any mold problems before you buy is extremely important.While searchin for a new property, you should always consider any smells within the property. Smells are a good sign that there is mold within the home. Even if you can smell bleach, this may be a sign that the current owners are trying to remove mold using the combination of bleach and water.Most molds will create a musty smell in the house, particularly in and around bathrooms and basements.A university in America is currently researching into a system which would allow you to look up what the air quality is in that area. Although you could only get a report for the outside air quality, you could get some sort of idea of what it’s like inside the houses. Generally if the air quality outside is poor then this can often spread into the houses in the surrounding area.Unfortunately this system is just in testing and it would involve sensors placed around the area to monitor the air quality. If you don’t want to wait for that, you could use a thermo-hygrometer while house hunting to monitor the air quality.If you currently have a problem with high moisture levels in your home, a dehumidifier is one way to combat it. However, if you don’t control it, the mold spores could spread around the house and damage the property. Resolving issues caused by molds can be costly, and if they are not looked at quickly, they can cause damage to your health.It’s odd, as I was researching for this article, I found lots of foreign equivalents. It’s slightly odd how the Mexican translation of humidifiers humidificadores, and the French translation, humidificateurs, can be almost the same whereas the German, luftbefeuchter, is nothing like the others.