The attic.
For many people, it’s a forgotten room in your home. Maybe you make your way up there a handful of times throughout the year to drag out holiday decorations or your rarely-used camping gear.
Among family memorabilia, tools, unused furniture, and other typical attic findings, something else seems to be lurking — mold.
That annoying cough and those irritated eyes suddenly have an explanation. Learn how mold in your attic can be a health hazard, how to remove it successfully, and how to ensure it doesn’t return.
Table of Contents
- What Causes Attic Mold?
- 5 Signs You Might Have Attic Mold
- How Do I Remove Mold From My Attic?
- How Do I Stop Mold From Growing in My Attic?
- Let Pure Environmental Help You Remove Mold From Your Attic and Prevent It From Returning
What Causes Attic Mold?
Molds grow from microscopic spores that are everywhere in the air, including in your attic.
Attics are the perfect breeding ground for mold. They’re made from plywood and drywall, and you often store many of your belongings in cardboard boxes that absorb moisture.
In the Pacific Northwest, there is no shortage of moisture, making mold difficult to prevent throughout Washington and Oregon.
Some typical causes of mold in the attic include:
- Roof leaks
- Improperly ventilated attics
- Inadequate, missing, or damaged insulation
- Unsealed openings in the ceiling
- Improperly vented fans or appliances
- Improperly installed rain gutters
How Serious Is Mold in the Attic?
Simply put, mold could lead to serious health and safety issues. If mold enters your HVAC system, it can cause asthma attacks and other respiratory issues.
Various symptoms from exposure to mold and mildew include:
- Coughing
- Wheezing
- Sneezing
- Runny nose
- Nasal congestion
- Sore throat
- Irritation of the skin, eyes, nose, throat, and lungs
Aside from these health concerns, mold can also cause considerable structural damage to your home.
That’s why we recommend contacting the professionals as soon as you suspect mold in your attic to begin the remediation process as quickly as possible. Pure Environmental offers remediation services and attic and crawl space cleanup in Portland. Contact us today.
5 Signs You Might Have Attic Mold
Let’s be honest — most people don’t go hunting around their attics looking for mold. Instead, mold is typically discovered by home inspectors, contractors, pest control providers, or other similar service people.
It’s time to flip the script. Homeowners should check their attics regularly for mold, especially if they live in a wet climate, like the Pacific Northwest.
You should plan to check your attic for mold every six months. Daylight savings time is a perfect built-in reminder for bi-annual home maintenance tasks.
Here’s what you should be on the lookout for:
- Dark stains on plywood
- Sunken or wet insulation
- Mildew smell
- Hot and stuffy air
- Condensation or frost buildup on the roof sheathing
#1: Dark Stains on Plywood
Most attics have abundant wood surfaces that make mold easy to spot. Typically, mold looks fuzzy, discolored, or like slimy patches of green, blue, red, or black specks of dirt. It might also appear as black stains.
As your mold problem worsens, it typically increases in size, covering more surface area.
#2: Wet or Sunken Insulation
If your insulation is wet to the touch or sunken due to excess moisture, this is a tell-tale sign that mold is soon to develop, if it hasn’t already.
#3: The Smell of Mildew
Mildew smells musty, stale, or earthy, similar to the smell of wet socks or the wet forest floor. The odor is normally unpleasant and pungent, making it quick and easy to notice.
#4: Hot and Stuffy Air
How does it feel when you step into your attic? A well-ventilated attic often feels a bit drafty, depending on the season. But an attic with mold brewing often feels stagnant, hot, humid, and stuffy — a perfect prerequisite for mold growth.
#5: Condensation on the Roof Sheathing
A “healthy” roof sheathing is dry and in good shape. If it looks wet with condensation, there’s reason for concern. A damp roof sheathing should undergo a professional inspection to ensure there isn’t a serious problem brewing.
How Do I Remove Mold From My Attic?
The scary part is over, or so you thought. You’ve identified a mold problem, but how do you get rid of mold in your attic?
There are a handful of DIY methods available that could prove to be successful, depending on how serious of a mold problem you’ve got on your hands. If your attic mold is more intense than you can handle, we recommend calling the professionals.
Utilize DIY Methods
Some DIY methods can help eliminate attic mold, although they are not the most thorough or efficient. Should you choose to follow amateur remediation methods, many safety precautions should be put into place to avoid harming your health.
Before jumping into DIY mold removal:
- Acquire and wear safety goggles, gloves, and a respirator or mask over your mouth and nose (an N-95 mask is the minimum safety standard).
- Wear old clothing and shoes that you can wash or dispose of after the job is complete. Ideally, a disposable bunny suit that includes built-in booties and a hood should be worn.
- Use clean brushes, clothes, and towels that you can throw away immediately after.
- Ventilate the room as best as you can by opening doors and windows, and setting up fans while you work. Ideally, the affected areas should be contained from the rest of the structure. We recommend using HEPA air scrubbing and negative airflow.
Use Vinegar
Regular white distilled vinegar is used to clean, deodorize, and disinfect surfaces. Some studies have shown that vinegar successfully removes about 82% of mold.
To use white distilled vinegar to remove mold, you’ll need to:
- Pour undiluted vinegar into a spray bottle.
- Generously spray the vinegar directly on moldy surfaces.
- Let the vinegar sit for a minimum of one hour.
- Scrub moldy surfaces with a soft-bristle brush to remove the mold.
- Dry the surface with a clean cloth.
- Dispose of the brush, cloth, and your clothes immediately.
Use Alcohol
We aren’t talking about any old bottle of alcohol you find in your liquor cabinet. You’ll need Isopropyl alcohol, also referred to as rubbing alcohol.
Similar to using vinegar to remove attic mold, to use alcohol, you will:
- Add alcohol into a spray bottle.
- Generously spray the alcohol on the moldy surfaces.
- Let it sit for a minimum of one hour.
- Scrub the moldy surfaces with a soft-bristle brush to remove the mold.
- Dry the surface with a clean cloth.
- Dispose of the brush, cloth, and your clothes immediately following removal.
Hire a Professional
Mold removal is a serious business, which is why hiring a professional is recommended.
Pure Environmental is equipped with the skills, tools, technology, and knowledge to successfully remove dangerous mold efficiently and identify what’s causing the mold issue. Then, we’ll help fix that issue.
Our team will:
- Identify the problem
- Physically remove the mold
- Clean the area
- Disinfect and treat the area
- Determine the root of the problem
- Fix the root of the problem
Contact the most thorough mold abatement specialists in the Pacific Northwest for a free estimate today — the health and safety of your family is at risk.
How Do I Stop Mold From Growing in My Attic?
Getting to the root of the problem is ideal, and Pure Environmental can help you do that. Once we’ve remediated your mold issue, we’ll address the root cause and help you implement solutions to ensure mold growth doesn’t return.
We recommend things like:
- Ensuring your attic has proper ventilation, especially in the winter. Inspect your ridge, soffit, and gable vents, and install a fan in your attic.
- Regularly inspecting your roof for leaks, cracks, gaps, or damaged shingles and repairing them as soon as possible to prevent moisture from entering your attic.
- Sealing all points of entry into your attic to prevent air from moving from your living spaces into your attic.
- Monitoring the humidity levels to keep ideal moisture levels in your attic.
Let Pure Environmental Help You Remove Mold From Your Attic and Prevent It From Returning
Our team at Pure Environmental knows mold. After all, we live and work in the Pacific Northwest. With all the rain we experience here comes excess moisture — a key component for mold and mildew growth.
If you’ve got a mold problem in your attic, Pure Environmental is your solution. We’re mold abatement specialists who have seen and handled it all.
Our process is thorough and significantly more effective than DIY mold removal methods. If you desire a healthy, safe, and mold-free attic, look no further than the professionals at Pure Environmental.
Our Professional Process
When you call our team to tackle the mold in your attic (or anywhere else it might be growing), here’s what you can expect:
- Our team will conduct a thorough initial mold inspection, partnering with local laboratories to collect and test samples, if needed.
- Once mold presence is confirmed, we’ll establish a “containment zone”.
- Within that zone, we determine whether any wood, drywall, insulation, etc. needs to be removed as part of the mold removal treatment.
- After removing any necessary materials, our experts thoroughly remove the mold and clean all affected surfaces using HEPA-filtered vacuums designed to capture fine particles.
- Next, we apply special cleaning agents to mitigate any remaining mold and treat the entire area with a registered, hospital-grade disinfectant.
- If desired, we can encapsulate the attic sheathing with a clear antimicrobial coating. However, in our experience, correct ventilation better prevents future mold growth.
- Finally, our mold abatement professionals will repair or replace any secondary affected materials and create a restoration plan for the impacted areas.