Home inspectors say to get mold inspection if your house flooded before rebuilding

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) -A flooded home doesn’t only mean cleanup, it also means mold inspections, and that’s what home inspectors are encouraging homeowners to do if they flooded last week.

It’s time to check for one more thing in a flooded house, and that’s mold.

“Before you rebuild your house, you want a person that is educated or qualified to take mold samples, to take some samples, have it analyzed by an EPA certified lab. So, you have documentation that okay before we rebuilt my house it was clear of any mold hazards,” says Kevin Dinkle who is a licensed home inspector with Advantage Services.

Typically, every house has mold in it which is not always harmful, but if the water sits in your house for multiple days black mold can develop. Home inspectors say that mold can start growing in 48 hours after the building is wet or building material is damp.

“Now mold is an allergen so it affects different people in different ways what affects you may not affect me. So, you know the different types of mold that may grow may affect certain members of the household or may not affect anybody,” adds Dinkle

That’s why Darlene Reine is getting her house checked out after water rose nearly as high as the electric outlets throughout her one-story home.

“My anxiety level is very high, I am very allergic to mold and or on allergy shots and so the thought of possibly having mold that we have no control over has made me nervous,” says Reine.

Home inspectors say there are even some things homeowners can do if they are nervous about potential mold growing like removing all wet building material, turning on fans and the AC to dry it out or use something to kill the mold.

“Once you start drying it out, use some sort of fungicide. Some sort of mold killer spray on it, bleach is not the thing to use, you want to got to Home Depot or Lowes or any other stores to get a product specifically designed to kill mold,” says Dinkle.

Even if your home hasn’t flooded, you can still hire an inspector to come out and check for dangerous molds that you may not be able to see with your own eyes.

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