If you are unfortunate enough to have to test your home for mold, you are probably thinking that this is going to be a pretty inconvenient thing to have to do. Well, it might not be fun to think that you have disease-causing mold living in your house, but doing the actual test to determine if it exists is not really that hard to conduct at all.
Whatever kind of test kit you end up using, the directions on the package must be followed to the exact letter or you will probably render the test useless. There are a few quite general rules that you should follow to get the most out of your testing kits.
If you can see the mold growing in your wall, ceilings, carpet, or on anything else in the home, you do not really have to do any guesswork as to whether you need to test the home or not. If you see anything like this, do not only test that room; test your entire home.
Every room needs to be tested and this includes the ventilation system, because it extends to every room in the house and if mold is growing in the vents, it will spread to the rest of the house. Run the air conditioner or fans in every room in your home before you put out the test kits so that if there are any mold spores in the room, they will be stirred up into the air and will settle down in the kit.
Do not set them up anywhere high; a coffee table or somewhere around the mid to low level of the room should be fine. If you set them up too high, you may not get a good sample.
If there happens to be mold growing visibly on anything, you can use a piece of scotch tape to lift the mold up off the surface and place it into the test kit. There is a method that you can use involving scraping some of the mold into the kit with a knife, but since this can stir up mold spores even more, unless you are wearing a respirator, you are probably better off using the tape method.
To test the ventilation system, the best thing that you can do is tape a test against the grill of one of the ventilation ducts so that the air coming out of it is hitting the testing kit at a 90 degree angle. This will allow you to get the maximum amount of exposure.
If you become concerned that mold exists on your property, the first thing that you should do is buy a mold testing kit. These test kits that you can use on your own are used to determine if mold does in fact exist in your home and to identify what kind of mold you are dealing with and if it is dangerous to you. These kits do not tell you just how much mold is growing in your home and will not tell you everything that a professional mold inspector can.
Mold testing kits include either a stick or a Petri dish that has something for the mold to attach to and grow in. The mold must grow on this item so the lab can determine what kind of mold you are dealing with.
The benefits of home mold testing kits are fairly decent. They are inexpensive for the most part and it does not typically take long for the results to come back from the lab.
Mold tests can be used in order to sample the mold in your home that you can see visually growing on the walls or on the floor and you can find out whether this mold is dangerous to your health or not. All molds are bad for the internal structure of your home, but not all of it will be harmful to your health. Either way it is a good idea to have it removed.
You can also use these tests to sample the air in your home. The air you are breathing may or may not be healthy due to a hidden mold problem. Testing the air being put out by your air conditioner is a good way to find out if there is mold where you live if you cannot find a visible infection.
These Petri dishes can also be placed around your home and if there are mold spores in the air, they will settle onto the dishes and begin to grow.
Unfortunately, you have to follow the instructions included with the tests or they will not be of any use to you. They simply will not return accurate results.
Something else that is unfortunate is the fact that the tests will not just pick up one kind of mold in your home; if there is more than one kind of mold growing in your home, it will pick them all up and molds do not tend to grow at the same speeds. Aspergillus molds, for example, tend to grow faster than Stachybotrys chartarum.
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