Avoiding Mold in Your Bathroom

4/2/2018 (Permalink)

Bathrooms are one of the most common areas of the home where mold occurs. Steamy showers with bad ventilation and possible leaks from the toilet, shower, tub or sink are the most common reasons for mold in the bathroom. However, you can prevent mold from occurring by watching out for these things:

• Cracked or missing caulk- when caulk is cracked or missing, it allows water to get behind the wall or under flooring. When water pools and gets trapped, mold could begin to grow. You can prevent this from happening by recalling around the bathtub, sink or toilet.

• Bad or no ventilation- some bathrooms lack an exhaust fan allowing the steam from a hot shower to properly exit the bathroom. Without an exhaust fan, the steam causes the walls and flooring to dampen which could cause mold growth. Other times, the exhaust fan is not hooked up correctly or is for show rather than actually venting to the outside. A properly installed exhaust fan vents to the outside the remove the steam from the air.

• Broken seals- when seals around toilets or pipes break, they cause leaks that you likely can’t see because the leaks occur behind walls or under flooring. 

Sometimes these leaks are are only found when flooring and walls are opened up and exposed.