What Happens if You Discover Mold Growing on Your Windows?
However clean and neat you are, a mold infestation will always make your home seem dirty and unaesthetic. Unfortunately, there is no way to totally get rid of mold, as it is a natural constituent of the environment. The most you can do is try to remove the visible mold and fix the root cause, hoping to reduce it to bearable levels. Besides causing property damage, mold can negatively impact your health, leading to chronic respiratory diseases. If you realize mold is growing in your windows, take the following steps.
Determine the Cause
Molds are tiny fungi that thrive in humid, semi-dark environments. They can grow in restrooms, kitchen sinks, and wet insulating material. Additionally, the fungi can grow on window sills and frames, especially if the windows allow rain to enter from the outside or once condensation occurs on the window frames in a shower room. Here, try to determine how water sips into the windowpane if mold has formed on a window in your home. Sometimes, the mold could form on windows because the air circulation in the room is poor.
Fix the Leaking Window
If the fungus has grown inside the window pane, you’ll need to extract the whole window for cleaning, but you will require a replacement if it is beyond fixing. Remove any wet insulation or framing and thoroughly dry any remaining framing. Finally, to curb the situation and avoid another occurrence, fix the leaks and seal the window frame.
Inspect Roofing and Gutters
If you searched and did not notice any apparent window leakages, it’s possible that the leak might be originating from your roof. Clogged gutters could also lead to mold growth, allowing water to enter your residence through the wrong channels, reaching your window sills. Examine the roof and gutters properly to ensure that they are not the root cause of the issue.
Improve Ventilation
There could be a possibility that there is no leak on your windowpanes and gutters are not clogged. This leaves you with one more option; poor ventilation. Mold takes advantage of poorly aerated rooms and might invade your HVAC system. If you realize that this is the cause, try to improve your aeration by opening your windows more often and using a good quality HVAC.
Pay Attention to Your Bathrooms
The humidity and moisture content found in bathrooms is often underrated, which is why most bathrooms usually end up with a black mold problem. If your bathroom windows have mold around them, it simply means the room experiences high humidity levels that are never reduced. You can solve this by connecting your air conditioning system to the bathroom for better aeration. You can also have a portable fan in the bathroom to counter the humidity problem if your air conditioning cannot reach the bathroom area.
Frequently Check the Windows
It is possible to deal with mold once and completely do away with it. Unfortunately, mold is extremely difficult to treat and might reoccur. For this reason, you must monitor the windows and other areas prone to mold infestation to prevent long-term exposure.
If you are dealing with a black mold problem in Southern California, contact the professional mold removal and cleanup pros with Los Angeles Mold Remediation Pros for a free on-site estimate to help safely remove and remediate your mold issues.