5 Signs Indicative of Potential Mold in Your Home

While I am not a mold inspector or remediator, I have learned a lot about mold in homes along my own journey addressing mold in my home. In my experience, I have found that I am more knowledgeable about mold that some inspectors and home builders that I have met. Given this, I have felt so overwhelmed and lonely at so many points in this journey. As a seeker of information, my intention is to pass along what I’ve learned in bite-sized chunks so if you find mold in your home, you have a safe and reliable place to figure out next steps. If you’re new here, take a look at this post to orient yourself with the mold basics. Here are five signs to be on the look out for in your home, as they can often indicate a potential mold problem:

One: Look for water damage

Outside the home, check the roof, gutters, and grading around the house.

• On the roof, look for algae, moss, and mold. Not only do these look unsightly, but they’re a sign that the wood on the roof is likely rotting.
• The gutters also need attention. Gutters clogged with leaves and branches make it difficulty to water to drain away from the house appropriately, and leaves stuck in gutters will rot. Follow the path the water takes when it moves through the gutters and make sure it is draining away from the house.
• That leads us to the last place to check: the grading around the home. The land around the foundation of the house should be sloping away from the home to carry water away. Puddles of standing water against the foundation are certainly concerning, as is land that slopes in towards the home (I saw this in a house I toured recently where there was an inverted corner in the home and water was pooling there since the land sloped down towards the home. That entire corner was covered in black mold in the unfinished basement. What a nightmare!).

Checking inside the home can get tricky since we don’t have x-ray vision to see behind drywall, but there are plenty of clues to collect in places we can see that can give us some insight. Some of the most common places to check are around plumbing in bathrooms and the kitchen. Windows are another important place to check. No matter what room you’re in, keep an eye out for peeling paint, water stains on the ceiling or walls, and baseboards pulling away from the wall, as they all indicate potential mold.

• When checking around the plumbing, look under sinks for squishy, warped, or discolored wood. Check around your dishwasher and washer, too.
• In bathrooms, check the caulking for mold, and lift up the back of the toilet tank to see if there’s mold growing in there.
• Around windows, look for mold, sogginess or staining.

Much of what I’ve learned about visually inspecting for mold, I learned from Brian Karr and Michael Rubino. I highly recommend checking out these two invaluable resources and all the free content they share.

Two: High humidity

High humidity is a concern in every part of your home because mold needs oxygen, food, and moisture to grow. Since we can’t prevent it from accessing oxygen or food (because it eats everything), we can focus on reducing moisture as much as possible. Part of that process means we need to explore humidity.

Of course, bathrooms with showers and tubs are an important consideration, as all of that steam and condensation needs to be adequately dissipated by adequate circulation. The extremes of the building, the basement or crawlspace and the attic, are also known to grow mold quite easily. Another place to consider is the upper levels in homes without zoned heating and cooler, as they tend to be warmer than the main level. Trickiest of all, if there’s a humidity problem in any of these places, it can make the main floor feel “normal,” even when the humidity is elevated there, too. In general, you want to keep humidity between 30-50% to prevent mold from growing. While the EPA fails to address the air quality concerns that mold brings, even they recommend this range (see lesson 3 on Humidity on the EPA site).

One way to track humidity is to pay attention to your body, so take note of how much you’re sweating in your own home. Another clue that humidity is high is condensation on the inside of your windows, or between window panes. If you’re willing to invest a little money for more accurate results, you can purchase a simple hygrometer, like this one. The most expensive option to monitor humidity is to purchase a dehumidifier that kicks on automatically once you set it to the appropriate moisture level. This won’t tell you the exact humidity level, but it will give you an idea AND do something to improve things by dehumidifying the air. We have this one in our current home.

Three: Musty, earthy odors

Musty odors are often indicative of some sort of fungal growth that warrants investigating. The scent is pungent and hard to miss. It’s absolutely pervasive, no matter how much you clean or spray (hopefully health conscious) air fresheners. Some people describe the scent of mold as the “old house” smell. Unfortunately, there can be some truth to this, because the older the home is, the more likely it is to have water damage, and therefore, mold.

My husband describes the smell of the rental house we lived in as being similar to cat urine. Stachybotrys has often been described as smelling like cat urine, and while we did not know to test the mold in the rental, my assumption, based on this and the presenting symptoms, is that we were living in Stachy.

Another clue related to your olfactory system can be an increase in allergy symptoms. If you’re sneezing, coughing, have a stuffy or runny nose, and your eyes are itchy or watering in your home, this might be a sign that you’re being exposed to mold.

Four: Crawlspaces

Just having a crawlspace with a dirt floor is, unfortunately, concerning. If it doesn’t currently have a mold problem, the chances are quite high that it will at some point because the wood framing of the home is being exposed directly to soil and outside air. On top of that, crawlspaces are notorious for not venting well, so it can easily become humid, making it the perfect place for mold to grow. And then because of the stack effect, that moldy air is going to be circulated all throughout your home. What a disaster! Knowing what I know now about crawlspaces, I will never live in another home with a crawlspace.

If you have one, I’d recommend calling a reputable inspector to investigate instead of doing it yourself. (Read this post for some thoughts on finding an inspector!) It’s important to preserve your health around mold, and anyone entering a potentially moldy crawlspace needs to wear proper protective gear.

Five: Beware of renovations

Purchasing a recently renovated home is often a disaster waiting to happen. Like we talked about above, the older the home, the higher chance it has water damage and, therefore, mold. When people flip and renovate houses, they generally don’t address the mold problem (one, because they don’t know how to, and two, because it’s ridiculously expensive). That means that the buyer of the renovated home will be stuck with a mold problem AND lose the clues for water damage (see number one above). On top of that, renovating disturbs the mold and kicks up dust, which is where mold spores and mycotoxins live, increasing the chances of mold toxicity or illness for the people living in the home. I know renovated homes are pretty and shiny and often affordable, but unless you’re able to track the history of the house, it’s a huge gamble for your health.

To learn more about what to do if you suspect mold, check out this post. If you’d like a checklist for places to look when doing a visual inspection, visit this post.

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