8 Things That Will Prevent Mold After Water Damage

Get All of the Water Out!

If you haven’t done so already, the very first thing to do is to Shop-Vac, squeegee, or towel out all the water that you can. The longer the water stays, and the greater the quantity, the worse the damage will be.

Drywall and wood will absorb water through capillary action, meaning that water on the floor can be halfway up the walls or even higher the longer you leave it.

Plus, you’ve got to get all of the water out before you can properly start work to limit the damage and prevent that mold outbreak that will surely be coming.

My weapon of choice is a Shop-Vac, and I highly recommend you have one on hand for just such an occasion. They can move a lot of water very quickly and easily. Don’t forget to remove the paper filter before you start it up!

Move Soggy Items Outside

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen folks try to deal with major water damage while leaving the soggy contents of the room in place. This just won’t work.

Furniture, furnishings, trim, shelving, books, anything that got soaking wet needs to be taken out of the room. Even if it’s not dripping wet, it’s going to stay damp enough to raise the humidity in the room, or it will slowly drip over time, complicating your efforts to dry everything out.

Whether or not you want to try and save your sodden possessions, get them out of the room you’re working in. Put them out in the garage, put them outside, just get them out of the room.

Remove Carpet

If you’ve got carpet in the room where the water damage occurred, believe me when I tell you you’re wasting your time until you take that carpet up.

You can go over it and over it with your Shop-Vac, steam cleaner, or any other appliance and it might seem reasonably dry, but it’ll be trapping moisture down in the backing and against the subfloor.

You won’t win this. As much as you might want to avoid it, you can save yourself a ton of time, grief, and money in the long run by pulling that carpet up. The carpet itself might be salvageable and can be reinstalled. Maybe you’ll have to put new carpet down.

Whatever the case, it must be done. The sooner you do it, the better your outcome will be.

Remove Subflooring

Here’s a trick I learned dealing with water damage in my rental properties and properties I picked up to fix and flip over the years. Whether you’re dealing with a major spill or legit flooding damage, try to lift or even remove the subflooring entirely.

Again, it’s something most people don’t want to do but waiting for it to dry out slowly, especially when you can’t direct your efforts against one side of it, is only going to increase the chances you’ll be dealing with mold on the flooring.

If you pull it up and do so carefully, you can at least treat it and maybe save it. If you can’t, you’ll be helping to prevent mold from spreading to the base of your walls and the substructure. It can travel far from there, believe me.

Spray All Surfaces with Mold Killer

Here’s another spot where people commonly go wrong when dealing with this sort of damage: they wait for mold to appear before they break out the mold killer.

Don’t do that. If you’ve got water damage, assume that mold is already forming, and act accordingly. The good news is it’s a lot easier to deal with before it turns into a proper nasty looking black, brown, or green colony.

Get your hands on a good mold-killing solution and spray down all surfaces with it: walls, joists, floor, rafters, ceiling, everywhere that got wet. This will kill or neutralize what mold spores are already present and beginning their life cycle.

Improve the Flow of Air

Airflow is one of your biggest allies when you’re trying to prevent mold from getting a foothold. Well-ventilated areas are less prone to mold growth because the vast majority of mold varieties need a moist environment to procreate.

Open the house up to let in air if conditions are dry. Otherwise, set up fans and lots of them to keep tons of fresh, dry air moving over all affected surfaces.

If you’ve pulled up the flooring, make sure you have some directed down on the joists and other substructure. You definitely want to dry them out.

Wood especially seems like it takes a long time to dry, and it does, but keeping air moving over it helps a ton—don’t neglect this step!

Let in Sunshine

Your other ally for beating mold is sunshine. Pure, simple sunshine. You ever notice how mold typically grows in dark, dingy, depressing places? That’s because it won’t grow in the light!

If at all possible, let in as much sunlight as you can where you are working and keep it there. Not only will it help dry things out, but the UV itself will help kill off mold and prevent growth.

Obviously, you won’t have skylights, a retractable roof, or other features that will let you expose a whole room to the sun, but you can pull back the drapes, open the blinds, and things like that to help light it up the room.

Use Moisture Absorbers and Dehumidifiers

Once you’ve got the water out, the floor pulled up, and air moving in the room, it’s time to step up your approach. Use chemical moisture absorbers and dehumidifiers to help get all of the moisture out of the air that you can.

Chemical moisture absorbers are usually sold in small cans, bowls, or buckets and designed for helping to dry out places that stay a little humid, like kitchen pantries, bathrooms, basements, and so forth. These can work wonderfully if you stick them behind a wall or under a floor that you can’t otherwise reach.

Electric dehumidifiers will help to catch moisture that is evaporating from soaked materials in your home, something that will speed up the drying process and again help to keep that mold colony from thriving. You’ll need to stay on top of emptying the tank on these devices, or replacing them in the case of chemical moisture absorbers.

Check Everywhere

Last but not least, check everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. There is no nook, no cranny, no out-of-the-way space that is not worth checking in the aftermath of major water damage.

I’ve dealt with more than a dozen homes that were thoroughly emptied of water, dried, cleaned, and declared good to go, and found out much later that there was a monstrous colony of mold thriving behind that one stud in the corner that didn’t get checked, or the far corner of the room where the water surely couldn’t have reached.

This right here is the reason why water damage is so insidious; it can give rise to mold in unexpected places. If there is any air gap for those mold spores to travel from their current location, they will spread elsewhere and sicken occupants of the home.

It is for this reason too that seasoned mold remediation professionals seem absolutely fanatical about tearing out all affected walls and floors; it’s because that is the only way to perform a thorough inspection most of the time.