Water damage can be a nightmare to deal with. It can permanently damage building materials and personal possessions alike. But the trouble with water is that it’s never alone; it also brings with it the threat of mold growth and further damage. If you’ve experienced water damage in your home, how long do you have before mold growth begins? Keep reading to find out how quickly you need to hire water removal services in Kansas City.
How Quickly Can Mold Grow?
You might think that mold takes weeks to grow if you’re going by your old loaf of bread or middle-school science experiment. But the conditions in both of those situations are very different from those in your dark, water-damaged walls. In the right conditions, mold can begin to form a colony almost immediately and can start growing visible “blossoms” of mold within 24 hours. This gives you a very short window in which to start drying out or removing materials that could become a petri dish worthy of those school experiments.
How Can You Stop It?
This timetable presents you with a difficult conundrum because most of those materials in your home will take a lot more than 24 hours to dry out. So, is there any way to stop mold from growing, or does every porous material need to be scrapped thanks to the possibility of mold growth?
Remember, 24 hours is under ideal conditions—namely, untouched, with no efforts to dry it out. If you begin to dry out materials within the first few hours after water damage occurs, you can actually stave off mold growth. Fans and blowers can keep mold spores from settling into materials and spreading, protecting your carpet, rugs, and other materials from hosting a mold colony.
2 Key Factors to Preventing Mold
So, when it comes to stopping mold from growing after you’ve experienced water damage in your home, there are two important considerations: speed and equipment. You need to react quickly and immediately begin removing water and airing out your possessions. This goes hand in hand with item number 2, the equipment you use to dry out your home. Industrial-quality fans, blowers, and vacuums will remove moisture much more quickly, contributing to a faster drying time and reducing the likelihood of mold growth.
There Are No Guarantees
Of course, there are never any guarantees that you’ll be able to prevent mold growth altogether. Mold is a fast and hardy fungus, and it can sneak in with just the smallest amount of lingering moisture. Even if you immediately call a professional and start removing water as quickly as you can, there’s still the possibility that mold will take root somewhere in the water-damaged materials. When this happens, the best thing you can do is to tear out that material and replace it to prevent the mold from spreading elsewhere.
If you need emergency assistance with water damage cleanup in Kansas City, contact Emergency Mitigation Services today for rapid services.