Mold Remediation

Mold Is Too Important to Risk – Trust the Mold Remediation Experts

No matter how hard you try, you can’t eliminate mold everywhere. It’s too widespread and prevalent in outdoor environments to be controlled. You can’t prevent it from entering your business, either. Fungal spores are tiny and travel in dust. They enter through your windows, your doors, and even your HVAC system. Run your finger across a recently dusted surface, and you might think your finger is clean, but the odds are good that there are still a few mold spores there.

However, you can prevent mold from growing if you keep it away from water. Mold needs a lot of water to grow, so as long as the spores are dry, they won’t grow. However, once they do get access to moisture, they can grow quickly. Within 72 hours, mold growth can spread significantly, spreading new spores and toxins throughout the building.

Common sources of water that fuels mold growth include:

• Plumbing issues
• Construction defects
• Poor maintenance
• Breaks in supply line or drain line from appliances
• Flooding from severe storms or hurricanes
• High humidity

Whenever there is a water leak or the relative humidity routinely exceeds 60%, mold growth can occur.

Black Mold Remediation

People are often concerned about the potential health effects of toxic black mold. Whenever mold growth appears in places, it raises this concern. The truth is that this concern about mold growth is somewhat overblown. Although there are real health risks associated with black mold (more about this soon), the elevated concern comes from a false attribution of risk based on one series of infant deaths that seemed to be linked to black mold.

Additional research shows that this linkage was likely not significant, and that there aren’t necessarily major health risks associated with black mold. Nonetheless, the public perception remains, and your business has to cater at least as much to your customers’ perceptions as to their actual needs. In addition, the presence of mold is seen as a sign of poor cleanliness, which is why it often appears in health inspection reports for restaurants.

Health Effects from Mold

Although mold is not as serious a problem as some people think, it can cause health problems. People with compromised immune systems because of HIV/AIDS or medications that suppress the immune system can develop mold infections. When mold spores contact the moisture in the body, mold can begin to grow. This isn’t normally harmful – the immune system can easily clean them up – but it can be harmful in people with a weakened immune system. These individuals may develop bronchitis or pneumonia as a result.

In addition, people who are allergic to mold or have a history of respiratory issues can experience an adverse reaction, which may result in:

• Coughing
• Sneezing
• Red eyes
• Nasal congestion
• Postnasal drip
• Worsening of asthma symptoms

For these reasons, it’s important to perform mold remediation as soon as possible to avoid an allergic reaction in customers or employees with mold allergies. With prolonged exposure, some people may even develop more serious reactions.

What Are the Signs of Mold?

You might not notice mold growth right away. Mold spores are present everywhere, but they don’t cause problems if they don’t find water. A slowly leaking roof can cause mold above the ceiling tiles, and constant spills and splashes in a wash station can lead to mold growth around a sink. If there’s a leak behind an appliance like a dishwasher, mold growth might progress significantly before anyone sees any sign of it. Water dripping from an air conditioning unit could lead to mold growth in an unattended corner of the room.

Because mold can be hidden, it’s important to perform annual mold and mildew checks as part of your routine building maintenance. If you know what to look for, you can do the check, but if you don’t it’s best to have a professional perform the inspection.

Look for mold in these areas:

• Attics
• Basements
• Crawl spaces
• Storerooms
• Ducts
• Wall interiors
• Kitchens
• Under sinks and wash stations
• Near water heaters
• Near foundation air vents
• Around walk-in freezers
• Under window unit air conditioners

Watch for these signs of mold and mildew in your building:

• Damp, musty odor
• Spots, odors, or stains on carpets and rugs
• Black or green flowery patterns on walls
• Musty smell when you turn on your air conditioning
• Presence of black or white spots on aprons or uniforms stored at work

Also watch for these signs of water damage:

• Warped walls
• Bubbled paint
• Distorted wallpaper
• Swelling or warped floorboards
• Loose or curling linoleum floor tiles

In addition, you should pay attention when people report a cough, a cold, or allergy symptoms at work that just won’t go away or only flares up at work. This could potentially mean that you have mold, but it might also mean that your office needs a dedicated disinfection treatment.

What to Do If You Discover Mold

If you notice signs of mold in your office, you should take the following steps:

• Turn off the HVAC system, if possible, to avoid spreading mold throughout the building.
• Restrict access to the area containing mold to as few people as possible. Make sure anyone entering the area with mold is not immunocompromised, does not have asthma, and is not allergic to mold.
• Try to identify the water source responsible for the mold growth. Do what you can to stop the water so that there won’t be more mold growth.
• Call FLEET Response at once, and our local company will send out a team to address the issue.

Try to avoid:

• Touching or disturbing the mold
• Blowing air across surfaces with visible or suspected mold growth
• Spraying bleach or other disinfectants on the moldy area
• Trying to manually dry the area
• Painting or applying facades over the mold

These actions could accelerate the growth and/or spread of mold in your building. Covering up mold doesn’t eliminate the problem, either – it can encourage more growth where you can’t see it.

Mold Remediation Services We Offer

Mold remediation must be thorough to remove all the current mold and prevent it from spreading to other areas. It also requires careful work to contain the mold during the cleaning process to avoid contamination of the space.

At FLEET Response, our local companies can remove mold from your commercial property. Our comprehensive approach to mold remediation can include:

• Mold testing
• Mold containment
• Mold cleaning and removal
• Sanitizing
• Demolition
• Reconstruction

Choosing expert mold remediation services by one of FLEET Response’s local companies will ensure thorough and efficient mold removal. It will protect your property, your employees, your customers, and your business reputation from the potential damage that can come from stubborn mold growth.

When You Might Need Mold Remediation

Any time you have a large or complex mold growth in your building, you should get professional mold remediation. Here are some of the more common situations where professional mold remediation is best:

• Disaster Recovery – Whenever your business is affected by flooding, you should get professional restoration services, including mold remediation. The concern is not just the mold, but also the numerous dangerous contaminants that could be present in flood waters, such as chemicals, bacteria, and sewage. A professional can assess the state of the water and the damage to determine whether it’s best to dry and restore the walls, tear them down to the studs, or tear them down completely. Mold remediation is one part of this consideration.
• HVAC Contamination – HVAC systems spread air throughout your building. When this air is fresh and clean, it is healthy and helps to maintain good ventilation. However, if the HVAC system is affected by mold growth, the mold can spread quickly through a building. Not only that, but the HVAC system can directly spread the mold spores and toxins that trigger allergic reactions and infections. It’s important to have this problem addressed by mold remediation professionals to ensure it’s cleaned properly.
• Structural Drying – Structural drying means taking steps to ensure that the interior structure of a building is dry, not just the surface. When you have a large leak, backed up sewers, or flooding, the water soaks deep into the wall. Left untreated, this water will lead to the growth of toxic, destructive mold that can cause health problems and damage the integrity of the building. Professional drying equipment and techniques can get the water out of the walls to protect the health of people, and the building itself.
• Specialized Item Cleaning – Moldy items can sometimes be restored – they don’t need to be thrown out. Sometimes the restoration process costs a fraction of the replacement cost. It’s especially important for historical or rare items. However, the cleaning process can be difficult, and should be trusted to restoration professionals with experience working on that type of material.

Our Mold Remediation Process

At FLEET Response, our local companies follow a comprehensive mold remediation process. Through this detailed approach, their skilled teams not only completely eliminate the current mold growth, but also prevent it from returning.

Address the Water Source

Mold growth depends on the presence of significant amounts of water. Although it is possible for mold to grow in areas where the relative humidity is consistently over 50%, most of the time this means that there’s a water source to blame. If this isn’t an obvious flood, it may take some detective work to track down the leak in the plumbing or the roof, or perhaps a place where spills take place regularly. As long as there is water, the mold will return, so our local companies make eliminating the water source priority number one.

Containment

Mold spores are small and light, which means they are easily airborne. Whenever the mold is disturbed, thousands of microscopic mold spores can be released into the air. These will travel easily with the slightest air currents, such as the one trailing behind a person as they walk through a mold-covered area. It’s important to close off the moldy areas before starting removal to prevent the spread of mold spores and toxins throughout the building.

Removal

Next, our local companies will wash mold off surfaces when possible. This means any hard, non-porous surface. Porous materials will often have to be removed if our local team determines that mold has penetrated them. Throughout the removal process, our teams monitor mold levels to ensure they have eliminated the mold presence. Our local company may utilize treatments to discourage future mold growth.

Reconstruction

Sometimes our local companies have to remove parts of your building to completely eliminate mold growth. All our local companies include skilled restoration experts who can handle reconstruction as well as mold remediation. When necessary, they can rebuild the treated areas, replacing insulation, drywall, flooring, and more. They can even do all the finishing work necessary to eliminate any trace that you ever had mold.