How to Get Rid of Black Mold

Black mold is a terrifying thing to find in your home. Not only is it a hazard to your health, but it can destroy the foundation of your home. There are ways to remove black mold from your home safely, and you should do this as soon as possible before it gets worse.

There are multiple steps to this process, with the first one identifying the mold itself. Most of these steps require little money, unless the mold has taken over multiple square feet in your home.

Identifying the Mold

There are multiple ways to inspect if the black mold is mold and not dirt, or mildew. The colour needs to be black, as the name suggests, and it needs to be in rounded clusters spread outwards. If you aren’t sure after inspecting, you can get a mold kit or do the bleach test.

For the bleach test, take a cotton swab and add 1 parts bleach, 16 parts water to a bowl. Swab the area with the diluted bleach. If the spot lightens, or when you wash it off it comes back it’s mold. You could also hire a mold inspector if you want to be absolutely sure.

Remove Moisture in Affected Area

Before you can start cleaning up the mold, you’ll need to mop up all the water that’s leaking. If this water isn’t removed, the mold will continue to come back. Treat the mold inflected area as a contamination zone, and throw out all items used to mop up the water.

Seal the Room

Put plastic all over the room, including doorways and windows that would won’t be putting a fan in. You’ll need to attach an old fan, or a cheap new fan into the window, and seal the rest of the open area with plastic or tape.

Wear Proper Clothing

You don’t need a hazmat suit to remove mold, but you absolutely can’t skip on the respirator. Use either a N-95 or P-100 respirator because they cover your entire mouth and nose area, while filtering mold particles. Use clothing that you’re okay with throwing away, because you don’t want to wash mold-particle clothing with the rest of your laundry.

Everything that you’ve used to clean up mold that can’t be easily thrown out like your vacuum needs to be cleaned thoroughly with soap and water. Otherwise, put all plastic, rags, and sponges in a heavy duty garbage bag and remove it from your house by the nearest exit.

Cleaning Products and Aftermath

You can use commercial cleaning products to remove the mold, but soap and water does the trick well. Most soap, including dish soap, has chemicals in them to specifically clean mold off walls, wood, and tile. Bleach can be used, and is often recommended, but soap is the better option. Bleach doesn’t clean like soap does, and it can damage your walls.

After you’ve removed everything from the room and cleaned up, use an antimicrobial spray and spray down the whole infected area. If you have a large area, it’s best to cloud it with the antimicrobial spray just to be sure.