mold-safe home | Mold Free Living

When you keep moisture out, ventilate properly, and use sound building materials your home can be a very healthy and mold-safe place to live.

Building a custom home is an exciting and, at times, overwhelming adventure. My husband and I collaborated on 2 such adventures when we were first married. Each home was designed and built to our specifications. All materials that were used were chosen by us. My husband was working in the building industry at the time and was able to be onsite for the majority of both builds and served as the general contractor. There was definitely a large amount of security in knowing that our homes were thoughtfully and soundly built. And, even though we were not consciously choosing “healthy” or always the most “mold-safe” building materials (we obviously had not been affected by mold yet at this time), we built beautiful homes where we enjoyed the happy early years of marriage and babies.

Then, the housing/building market crashed, and my husband was forced out of building and to look to other industries for work. We were also forced to move frequently for his work. It was then that we were relocated to homes that were found by his company and were often sight-unseen to us prior to move-in day. It was also during this time that we moved into the home with the toxic mold problem throughout the HVAC unit that made us all so sick. With the mold situation came great upheaval and new building challenges, because we were forced, under tremendous health and financial strain, to take our home almost down to the studs to have it properly remediated. (Note: We were advised that proper remediation required us to gut the interior of the home of anything the mold had touched or penetrated, so that our family could safely return, live there, and continue to recover our health. This may sound extreme; however, when someone has mold sickness and increased sensitivity, all mold, down to microscopic spores and hyphae, must be addressed. This is precisely why there are so many failed remediations.)

Even though we had built our own aesthetically-fit homes in the past, we realized how much we didn’t know about building an intrinsically healthy home. It was crazy how all of the things that seemed to matter to us before when we were building our homes, like the size of the master bedroom closet, or whether to tray or coffer ceilings, just didn’t matter to us anymore. The things that mattered to us with this re-build and that we poured our resources into were all health- and indoor-air quality-centered, like HVAC design for optimum air flow and dehumidification (dehumidification not being a request most homeowners have), using all metal ductwork to prevent dust and mold, re-grading our yard to route water away from our foundation, and on and on.

Decrease your chances of ending up in a home that can make you sick when you INCREASE your mold IQ, apply some proactive indoor air quality detective work, and use some of my tried-and-true mold-safe rental property tips and tools.

Finding a mold-safe home to purchase or building your own mold-safe home are formidable tasks, but I would argue, that finding a mold-safe rental home is actually even more difficult. Rental situations just tend to be harder to take control over. Sometimes getting what you want and need to ensure that your indoor air quality is healthy and won’t cause you further or renewed sickness is next to impossible. It is almost a forgone conclusion that when you are renting, you don’t expect to get exactly what you are looking for and end up taking the least adverse choice, rather than a home that you are excited about and intend to stay in for a while.

Why are healthy rental properties so hard to find?

Mold patients, in particular, are often forced into the rental market. We have the unique issue of needing temporary or rental housing when having to leave our current homes while we make the choice to remediate or sell our “sick” home. At the time, neither “choice” feels like an actual choice and the financial, emotional, and physical stress of finding a temporary or permanent place to live can be daunting. Sometimes, like in my situation, you are lucky enough to have family and friends who will take you in for chunks of time, allowing you to get out of the mold and recover your health and sanity. We were gypsies during our home’s remediation. The kids and I lived in 3 different homes in 3 different states over the course of 4 months while our home was being overhauled, and essentially taken down the studs and rebuilt from the inside out. We had nothing but the new clothes on our backs and each other (we left all of our possessions behind, save some things we had in storage that had never been inside the moldy home), so we were excited to have any place to lay our heads. Others who don’t have that option, have to locate temporary accommodations or rental housing to fill this gap. Some folks for myriad reasons have to find rental housing for the long-term, so they want and need to make a healthy choice about where they live.