Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Wood Rotting Mold

A mold that plagues some homes and should not be underestimated is Meruliporia incrassate. This is a fungus that causes a severe amount of rotting in the wooden parts of your home and this is extremely difficult to get rid of, since is has the ability to collect and retain water over a longer period of time than other molds. It typically extends itself through not only the wood, but other porous materials that make up your home and find the water that it needs in order to stay alive.

The news calls this a “house eating fungus” because it will eventually do just that if it is left untreated. The decay of the wood framing of your home is inevitable if this infestation is not removed as soon as possible. This usually shows up in the areas of your home that are the most moist, such as the bathroom, kitchen, and the basement. This mold appears as a somewhat yellowish dust on the areas that are affected. In order to keep this growth from returning, you will need to remove all of the materials affected by it and then some. Simply trying to clean this mold with disinfectants or bleach will not work under any circumstances. Cleaning any other kind of mold off of a porous surface with bleach or any other disinfectant is usually not possible, but this kind of mold cannot be gotten rid of in this way at all.

About two extra feet of infected material needs to be removed from the home before the infestation will be gone for good. This means if the visible infection spans about 4 feet of a wooden beam, then an extra two feet needs to be removed on each side of it to be sure that you get all of it. This mold likes to extend strands of itself out about this length in order to retain the water that it will use to keep itself alive. Getting rid of this extra material may seem like a waste, but it is really the only way to be certain that it does not come back.

As long as your previously affected area remains dry for a long time after the infected wood was removed, the infection should not return. Keeping the previously affected area as dry as possible may help keep the mold from coming back, even if some of the wood remained infected after you removed the majority of it.