Evernon Creations

If you are unfortunate enough to have to test your home for mold, you are probably thinking that this is going to be a pretty inconvenient thing to have to do.  Well, it might not be fun to think that you have disease-causing mold living in your house, but doing the actual test to determine if it exists is not really that hard to conduct at all.  Whatever kind of test kit you end up using, the directions on the package must be followed to the exact letter or you will probably render the test useless.  There are a few quite general rules that you should follow to get the most out of your testing kits. 

If you can see the mold growing in your wall, ceilings, carpet, or on anything else in the home, you do not really have to do any guesswork as to whether you need to test the home or not.  If you see anything like this, do not only test that room; test your entire home.  Every room needs to be tested and this includes the ventilation system, because it extends to every room in the house and if mold is growing in the vents, it will spread to the rest of the house. 

Run the air conditioner or fans in every room in your home before you put out the test kits so that if there are any mold spores in the room, they will be stirred up into the air and will settle down in the kit.  Do not set them up anywhere high; a coffee table or somewhere around the mid to low level of the room should be fine.  If you set them up too high, you may not get a good sample.  

If there happens to be mold growing visibly on anything, you can use a piece of scotch tape to lift the mold up off the surface and place it into the test kit.  There is a method that you can use involving scraping some of the mold into the kit with a knife, but since this can stir up mold spores even more, unless you are wearing a respirator, you are probably better off using the tape method.

To test the ventilation system, the best thing that you can do is tape a test against the grill of one of the ventilation ducts so that the air coming out of it is hitting the testing kit at a 90 degree angle.  This will allow you to get the maximum amount of exposure.

Orlando Flood Damage Cleanup

Not surprisingly, water damage is one of the most frequent causes of home insurance claims.  Not many people like having to discover what is and what isn’t covered by their home insurance policy, but that’s often the way that it goes.  A pipe bursts in the basement or an appliance such as a clothes washer or dishwasher begins to leak all over the floor while you’re gone on vacation and all of a sudden you find yourself wondering if you’re covered.

For example, if a pipe were to burst in the home due to a drop in temperature and you had left the home vacant and without the heat necessary to keep the pipes from bursting, you might not be covered.  They could possibly deny you due to the fact that you did not take the necessary action that would have prevented the event. 

If your bathtub overflows, you should be covered, even if it’s just because you were on the phone or tending to another matter in the house and simply forgot to turn off the water.

In most cases if a major household appliance such as a washer or a dishwasher suddenly malfunctions and water spews all over the floor and causes damage, you are covered by your homeowner’s insurance.  You’ll have to pay for the cost of fixing the washing machine or dishwasher yourself, but any damage caused by the water itself should be paid for by your policy. 

If the cause of the damage is heavy rain and the water leaks through the roof or floods into the basement and the house itself and items inside it are damaged, you should be covered for the cost of the water damage to the interior of your home.  The damage to the belongings inside your home is probably not covered, however; if the roof leak was caused by a tree limb falling on the house, then the damage to your furniture, roof, and interior should be covered to a reasonable extent.

One of the major causes of water damage to homes, however, is usually not covered.  This is a flood.  Unless you have an insurance policy that specifically identifies a flood as a source of damage to the home, you aren’t covered.  Flood insurance needs to be purchased from the federal government and your local community should be able to give you information as to whether or not they participate in the National Flood Insurance Program.

Miami Wet Carpet