Mold is always a result of moisture problems. If your home is dry, there will be no mold. However, if it is unfortunately attacked by dirty and hazardous mold and mildew, finding an effective way of tiny home mold removal should be taken into account as soon as possible.
What’re causes of mold? What’re signs of mold? How to kill mold on walls and bathroom? How to prevent the recurrence of mold? This article is going to answer all these questions.
Why Your House Has Mold?
High Level of Humidity
Mold often begins to grow in the winter, or more particular, when it rains for a few days. On these days, the level of humidity indoors and outdoors is higher than when it’s on warm or dry days. If your house doesn’t have a good ventilation system or you don’t take action immediately to decrease the humidity, like heating or drying, mold could grow.
Leaking Pipes
Water leakage from pipes is a popular cause of mold growth. The challenge is that it’s difficult to discover the leaks because the pipe system is mostly installed inside or behind the walls. As you detect them, mold would sprout already, and your tiny home mold removal will be too late.
Leaky Roof
Water from the roof is another kind of leakages triggering the mold growth in homes. Since the roof is right above the attic and ceiling of your tiny house, water has the chance to stay for a long time. Fortunately, unlike leaky pipes, a leaky roof is easy to detect, and water drops from the ceiling are the sign.
Poor Ventilation
Poor ventilation is the cause of many house problem, and mold is one of them. The evaporation of water and steam creates the moisture. The air circulation inside and outside the house through windows and doors helps to balance the moisture. Poor ventilation means bad air circulation.
Signs of Mold in Your Tiny House
Strange Smell
Mold can be hidden out of your view, like behind wallpaper or inside walls. In these cases, the best way to detect it is using your noise. Whether you’re intentionally or unintentionally, if you smell any pungent or unpleasant odor in the area that you are, it could be the clue of mold. Then, follow the odor to find out where it’s foulest to spot where the smell is coming from.
Seeing Signs
In most cases, the mold is recognized by eyes. However, sometimes people don’t realize there is mold even though they saw it. Depending on what kind of mold and where it grows, mold is different in size and color. Some appear as small clusters, while others go along the edge as lines. Some look green or black, while others can be white.
Health Symptoms
Mold might contain toxins, and they might poison you. The substance called Stachybotrys Chartarum from the mold can cause mental effects on the human body. Therefore, if you feel dizziness or headaches while you’re in your house, it could tell you whether there is mold appearance or not. Even though this kind of sign is easy to be misunderstood, you still need to consider it if you discovered piping leakages or low humidity level before.
Best Way to Clean Mold on Walls
In my opinion, the best way of tiny home mold removal is to start with a natural method such as using vinegar and borax. Do it first to see whether the mold has gone or not. If the result is not like what you expected, it’s time to move onto a stronger method, in which bleach will need to be used.
No matter which method you will go, it’s necessary to wear a pair of rubber gloves to protect your skin from getting in touch with the mold. Besides, wear old clothing because mold can stick your clothes while cleaning.
1. Prepare the cleaning solution by combining the ingredients below together in a bucket. Since borax is rigid, you will need to stir it until it’s fully dissolved. Then, pour the mixture into a spray bottle.
- 1 cup of white vinegar
- 4 tablespoons of borax
- 4 cups of hot water
2. Spray the solution on the wall surface. Wait for an hour to make sure the mild acidity in vinegar has enough time to kill fungi and bacteria in the mold.
3. Spray again. Then, rub the surface with a hard brush. Make sure you don’t miss out any spore. Then, wipe the surface down to remove the residual and rinse the surface to make it clear.
4. Leave the wall to dry completely.
5. Spray the solution (or vinegar only) for the last time and leave it. Not only vinegar can kill about 80% of species living in the mold, but it’s also proved to prevent the recurrence of mold formation.
Best Way to Clean Mold in Bathroom
For removing mold from the bathroom wall, you can do the same as what I said in the above section. However, since mold in the bathroom is more “stubborn” than the living room or bedroom, it could be better if you go with the intense method of using bleach.
The mixture solution will be:
- 1 cup of bleach
- 4 cups of warm water
The cleaning process is the same as when using vinegar and borax.
- Prepare the solution and pour it into a spray bottle.
- Spray it on the wall, bathtub, shower, toilet, etc. Wait for an hour.
- Rub and wipe out
- Wait to dry
- Spray to prevent the recurrence of mold
Warning: Since bleach is very harmful to the eyes, skin, and even lungs, try to avoid them from contacting and smelling as much as possible. In addition to using rubber gloves and old clothing, you should wear goggles to protect your eyes and a face mask to prevent breaking the bleach fumes into your lungs.
How to Keep Mold Out of Your House
Tiny home mold removal is only the treatment. It will be better if you know to prevent mold in the early days. I provide some useful tips for you:
- Improve the house ventilation: Simply open the windows and doors between rooms on low-humidity days. Let the air flows to all the rooms. No moisture on walls and furniture, no mold!
- Dry and fix wet areas immediately: When you detect a pipe leakage, you find water on the floor or furniture, dry it as soon as you can. Also, don’t leave wet clothes in the washing machine for a long time, hang to dry them.
- Monitor humidity indoors: Try to keep the indoor humidity level between 30 to 60%. A humidity monitor is all you need for the best measurement.
