If you have a moldy smell coming form your basement or the lower floors of your house you may have noticed that it is difficult to locate the exact origin of the smell. This is a very common problem for homeowners and inspectors alike. A lot of the inspection work can be done by homeowners with a little understanding of how and where the problems exist. Mold in a home should be tackled rather quickly. If it is allowed to take it can easily grow into areas that make its extraction must more difficult and costly.

Mold requires both water and organics to grow. In a home the 'organics' are most commonly drywall, wood, carpet, and furniture. It is the source of water that is a little more tricky to discover. Mold will not grow without a water source. And outside of very high humidity levels (higher than inside most any home) mold will not grow more than a few feet from its source of water.

If you are experiencing any health problems such as being light-headed, nauseous, or headaches when you are near the smell then you should have someone else do the following inspections. Certain people are more sensitive to airborne mold than others.

To start, if it smells like mold it is mold. A mold or mildew smell is itself a guarantee of mold presence. Government and other resource sites support this. (Click on the link "Mold Information" at the bottom of the page for more information).

The most likely entry place for water in a basement or lower level floor is going to be the cove or "floor and wall" joint seen in these
basement waterproofing [http://www.basementdetective.com/va-resources/common-leaks/.com] images. These images illustrate most clearly that outside water enters most commonly at the point where the floor and wall meet. If your basement is finished you will have framing and drywall just inches from this entry point. The fact that this type of floor/wall leaking happens nearly everywhere the floor is underground leads to molded framing and drywall that often affects every wall. If you have carpet the easiest way to check for this type of leaking is to start in the corners and, using pliers, pull the carpet up to see if the tack strip has dark (blackish) stains on it. Careful if you reach down and touch it. It has nails in it to hold the carpet in place. If the tack strip is not dark colored and is clear it is either too new and has never gotten wet or you have another source of moisture in the house.

You can tell where the leaking has occurred based on where you wee the dampness on the tack strip. You can tell how long it has occurred by the degree of discoloration. If you have tile you would simply inspect the grout edge along the border of the room after a very heavy rain. You will clearly see the grout darkening as it nears the wall. Over time grout will become crumbly and will develop air pockets underneath. If your basement is unfinished you sill simply be looking for dark stains on the blocks or on the floor near the edges of the walls. Keep in mind the images in the link above and that the water is likely to appear near/at the wall.

If none of these seem to be sources then other sources of sufficient moisture could be, but aren't limited to, an air conditioning imbalance, plumbing leak or any number of sources on the inside of the home.

Mold Remediation 101