Saturday, September 29, 2007

Where Water Damage Is Most Common

Your kitchen and bathroom are the two most common areas to find water damage in your home and preventing it is probably a lot easier than you think. It might be a little annoying to have to remember to do these things on a semi-regular basis, but you won’t regret it when you realize how much money you’ll be saving. Water damage restoration can be expensive and why pay those costs when you can take a few minutes every now and then to make sure your two most at risk areas are covered?

If you’re lucky enough to have a dishwasher, you know that sometimes you’re unlucky enough for it to leak water out into your kitchen floor. If you do, it’s best to get this taken care of as soon as possible. The longer you allow your dishwasher to leak water into the floor, the more susceptible that area of the floor will be to water damage. Check the hose or pipes that lead to the dishwasher and see if those are leaking or have any weak spots.

One trick to use to see if you have any hidden leaks in your home is to turn off any and everything in your home that uses water (don’t even flush the toilet) and check what your water meter says. Leave these things off for about an hour and then go back and check your meter again. If the numbers have changed, you have a leak somewhere in your home.

The ice maker in your refrigerator can cause water damage a lot easier than you might think. The water line to this part of the refrigerator can rupture or like any other water line in your house, a connection can be lose and cause water to spew into the floor. If the door to your freezer doesn’t shut completely, then everything in your freezer will thaw.

A lot of water damage in the bathroom can be caused by a toilet that keeps overflowing over time. If you have small children in the house, make sure to supervise them while they’re in the bathroom. Most people know that babies putting objects into the toilet that do not belong there is a common occurrence and isn’t to be taken lightly. A piece of jewelry or a toy car can be the cause of a series of toilet backups and as a result, water damage around the base of the toilet. This will eventually cause the wood to rot if you don’t have a tile floor or if the tile around the base of the toilet is not sealed properly.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
damage restoration companies and
mold removal companies across the united states.

Water Damaged Cars And Why You Don’t Want One

Looking around for a used vehicle to buy either as your first car or as a replacement for your last one can be a hassle enough by itself without having to worry about whether you’re going to end up buying a lemon. You have to worry about financing, what kind of vehicle is best, and if it’s going to break down on you as soon as you get it home, but one thing that a lot of people don’t tend to think about when shopping for a new vehicle is if it has ever been completely submerged in water.

These vehicles aren’t always readily noticeable as having been submerged before. Dishonest car dealers and individuals looking to cheat you aren’t likely to tell you that a vehicle has been flooded, so you have to watch out for yourself.

One of the most dangerous things about vehicles that have been flooded can be is the possibility of mold growth in the interior of the car. It’s just as dangerous as the mold that can grow inside your home, but you’re less likely to notice it because most people don’t think about mold growing in their cars. Sometimes bad car dealers will try to cover the odor of mold in the car with air or carpet fresheners. You never know if the mold has been completely removed from the car unless the carpet has been replaced and the interior cleaned by a professional.

Even the engine isn’t safe. Any flood waters the car has been exposed to contain sand, dirt, silt, or any number of debris that can work its way into the engine and cause it to malfunction. Even sewage can be found in some flood waters.

There are also electrical problems abound in vehicles that have been flooded before. Many things on a vehicle today are monitored not by manual gauges, but by electronics and trying to use these by powering on the car before it’s completely dried out will probably ruin them.

Look for rust in the trunk of the car, particularly around the headlights and smell the interior closely. If there’s a musty odor or you can detect a scented air or carpet freshener has been used, it’s probably a good idea to go somewhere else to find a vehicle. Even if you purchase a vehicle history report off of a website, you might not get all the information on a vehicle. You’ll get any information that was reported to the insurance company and a claim was done on, but if the car was submerged and the person or dealer chooses to sell it without reporting the incident, they can.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
damage restoration companies and
mold removal companies across the united states.

Water Damage and Its Causes

Water damage is one of the worst things that a homeowner or a landlord can have to deal with on their property and most of us generally know what causes it, but what about the specifics? There are many different causes of water damage, but some are a bit more evident and common than others.

One of the best things that you can do to prevent water damage in your bathroom is to have a tile floor and not a carpeted one. Carpeted bathroom floors are popular in some circles, but they’re particularly good at absorbing water and hiding a water damaged (and probably mold infested) floor underneath. If you don’t have a tile floor yet and you can’t afford to have one installed at this time, do your best to make sure that your toilet and bath tub do not overflow.

A leaky roof is often a culprit of water damage in the attic and on ceilings and this can be prevented by purchasing a waterproofing sealant for your rooftop. This will prevent water from seeping into the house through a small sized leak. Unless something punctures your roof, this should fix most problems. Making sure your roof is properly angled depending on the climate that you live in is also essential to preventing water damage due to a leaky roof. If the roof is not properly angled so that snow and ice can fall off and to the ground, it will weigh down on it and eventually cause not only structural damage, but also water leaks.

Check the pipes underneath your kitchen and bathroom sinks and also any other pipes that are exposed to make sure that they are not cracked or otherwise damaged. They and any hoses should connect firmly to dishwashers, laundry washers, and sinks. Properly insulating your exposed pipes indoors and outdoors is also essential to keep them from freezing and bursting during the winter. If it drops below 20 degrees, leave a little water running through your faucets; running water is more difficult to freeze than its standing counterpart.

The land around the base of your home should be sloping away from it so that water is directed away from the foundation. If it is not, it will leak into your cellar and possibly cause structural damage to your home’s foundation. Water loosens soil and it can cause your home to sink into the ground over time.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
water damage restoration companies and
Dallas Residential Water Damage Restoration Contractors.

Mold In Our Daily Lives

Everybody knows how much damage mold growing inside a home or a workplace can be to human beings, but something that we tend to forget is just how important mold is to our daily lives. It exists everywhere, but people all over the world have used it to help advance society for years.

Molds have been used to make things like cheese, breads, and beer, which are some of the most important and basic foods we have. Bleu cheese contains mold and is pretty popular both in its salad dressing form and in its whole cheese form. Bread is a staple in almost every home on the planet and while beer might not be that important to some people, but it’s obvious how popular it usually is with the masses and some people can’t really imagine life without it. Sake is made in Japan by using a mold and what is known in Japan as red yeast rice is also made using mold, even though they require two different kinds. Other fungi such as mushrooms are used in our foods to help flavor them and add more substance to our meals. They’re particularly popular in Italian food and some species of mushroom can cost as much as several hundred or even between one and two thousand dollars per single pound.

Molds grow in the wild and assist in the decomposition of dead bodies and burnt foliage. After a forest is burned to the ground, the first things that begin to grow again on the landscape are fungi. Molds, which are classified as fungi, are some of the oldest organisms on the planet and have been here since before even the oldest dinosaurs. They break down anything that is based on cellulose like wood or any other form of dead plant and animal matter.

Molds are cultivated in laboratories worldwide for a number of uses, especially different kinds of medicines. Penicillin, one of the first shots that citizens of the United States receive, is made from mold in mass quantities and was discovered by accident. It’s been used to kill all kinds of bacteria that cause human diseases, including Staphylococcus and has been used since 1929 when Alexander Fleming first made known his discovery.

Molds only really become an issue whenever they begin to grow inside homes or businesses. They can cause us an innumerable amount of health problems and can damage our building structures on a basic level, not to mention making them unsightly.

Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Florida water damage restoration companies and
Miami Water Damage Restoration. contractors

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Preventing Mold When Home-Canning

Odds are fairly good that if you have a vegetable garden or any fruit trees in your yard that you know how to go about canning these items so that you can have them year-round. Whether you can tomatoes so you will have them during the winter or pickle cucumbers, growing our own food and preserving it at home has been commonplace in American culture for a very long time. Pickles, jams, jellies, marmalades, soups, or chutneys have been being made in homes across the country and the world for quite a while and it is still going on today because some people prefer home-made goods to their commercial counterparts.

There are benefits to both growing and canning your own food at home, even though a process that is similar is used by commercial food canners worldwide. One benefit is that you have the knowledge of just how sterile the equipment being used to preserve your food is. You know how clean the items are that you are using to can your food. When you purchase these items in a store, you do not know whether the equipment used was clean or not. You also have the benefit of knowing what pesticides, if any, were used on the fruits and vegetables that you are preserving. You do not have to be exposed to more pesticides and chemicals than you would use to protect your own garden from insects and different kinds of rodents.

One problem with home-canning, though, is that if it is not done properly, mold can start to grow inside the jars of food that you thought that you were preserving so well. Mold grows in everything that is preserved eventually, anyway, but it can occur much sooner if the food that you can in your kitchen is not properly preserved. Most home-canning guides suggest that you date everything you can and use it within a year to avoid spoilage.

Mold-contaminated jars can be a problem, but you can avoid this problem most of the time by making sure the equipment that you use is sterile. You can sterilize glass jars by filling them and your canning pot with hot water (not boiling) and bringing the pot to a slow boil for around 10 minutes. This should effectively remove all microbes and spores from the water.

Any food you can should be washed and thoroughly inspected. Questionable items should not be canned, but thrown away.

Food should also be packed loosely in the jars so that the food inside can be completely heated throughout. If the temperature does not get high enough, it will not be completely sterilized. Mold spores, bacteria, and yeast can continue to grow even in high temperatures.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Orlando water damage restoration companies and
Water Damage Restoration companies across the united states.

Mold in Our Homes

While there is no real way to completely get rid of the mold that exists in both our outdoor and indoor environments, there are some things that we can do to keep mold from growing on our food and our belongings. This typically happens when items like clothing are improperly stored or when foods are improperly preserved in our refrigerators. Whatever the cause may be, it is very likely that we can prevent these instances of mold from occurring if we just exercise a little diligence in the maintenance of our homes.

Mold likes to grow in the refrigerator, especially in jars of jellies and jams, but as long as we keep our refrigerators clean and free of contaminated items, mold will not grow as quickly. Take an inventory of the items in your refrigerator and make sure nothing is sorely outdated. Outdated items can be used for a short period after they expire, but if they start to show discoloration or mold growth, they should be thrown away immediately. Fruits and vegetables that show signs of mold growth should also be thrown away and anything else they were touching, especially other fruits and vegetables, should be washed.

Mold also likes to grow on clothing that has been packed too tightly into a closet space or other container. Air needs to be able to circulate through the entirety of the closet and some closets have air vents located in them to help with this, but if you pack clothes too tightly, then the vent cannot do its job.

If you have baby bottles in your kitchen, then you might have a problem with getting them completely dry if you do not have a dishwasher. If you have to wash your dishes by hand, then the best thing to do in order to keep mold from beginning to grow inside these and other oddly shaped bottles is to dry them the best that you can and put them in your freezer immediately after. Leave them in there until you need the bottles again.

Wet clothes or towels should never be tossed on the bathroom floor or into a hamper and left there. Any clothes that you throw on top of them will become contaminated with mold after they have been left there after anywhere from 24 to 48 hours. Some molds will grow after 24 hours, but many require up to 48 hours to begin to multiply. Wet clothes should be washed immediately.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Miami water damage restoration companies and
mold remediation companies across the united states.

How to Avoid a Buying a Water Damaged Car

One of the most important events in a young person’s life is the purchase of a vehicle and if you are unfortunate enough, as many of us are, to have to buy a used vehicle, well, you might already be a tad aggravated at the process. Maybe you cannot find the right color or the right make or model vehicle that you really want and even if you do find that, is the vehicle a sound one? Does it run the way it should for its age? These questions and more plague those of us who cannot afford a brand new vehicle, but did you ever think about asking whether a vehicle has been submerged completely in water before?

Flooded vehicles being sold without telling the consumer that they have been flooded is a bit more common than you might think. Unfortunately, most of us who go to purchase a used car do not think to ask about this or even check for signs of water damage before we sign the final sale papers. There are a few things that you can do to check and make sure if a vehicle has been flooded before.

Check the upholstery. If it does not appear to match the rest of the vehicle, such as the dashboard and other interior parts of the car, it may have been taken up and replaced due to water damage. If you think it has been replaced, do not hesitate to ask if it has and why the replacement was necessary. If it was due to the vehicle being submerged in water, then this is a vehicle that you probably do not want. You could have a full inspection done by a mechanic that you trust, however, if this is the exact make and model that you want.

Check the trunk and inside the dashboard for signs of rust. Checking around the taillights in the trunk is especially advised, because this is a typical spot where rust will build up if the car has been submerged.

The engine also needs to be checked. If the car was driven into a lake or a river, then the possibility that silt, sand, or mud has gotten into the engine is pretty large. These items can completely ruin an engine beyond repair, even though they may run for a short period of time.

If mold has started to grow in the interior carpet or upholstery, then the vehicle will have a fairly musty smell to it. If you stick your head inside the car and smell air freshener, however, you might want to be careful from that point forward. Air freshener is sometimes used to cover up undesired smells and give you the impression that the car is in better condition than it really is.



Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Orlando water damage restoration companies and
Water Damage Restoration companies across the united states.

Diseases Caused by Mold Exposure

We all know that mold poses a pretty good sized threat to our health, but the diseases that come about because of mold are some of the most serious around. These diseases almost always end in the suffix of “mycosis” or simply “osis” and they can sometimes end in damage to your internal organs that is often irreparable. They can also sometimes eventually result in death in the most extreme of cases.

These diseases are the most threatening for those people who have weakened immune systems. This can include small children (especially infants), those with HIV or AIDS, and the elderly who have any kind of health problems. Perfectly healthy small children and elderly people might fight off these infections a little better than some of their peers, but it is still not recommended that these people be exposed to mold for a long period of time.

The symptoms of diseases caused by mold can be anything from flu-like symptoms such as fever, chills, coughing, and sneezing all the way to more serious symptoms like the coughing up of blood. Anti-fungal medications can also pose a threat, since these medications can sometimes cause the exact symptoms that they are being prescribed to treat. Almost any doctor that gives a patient antifungal medication will request the patient to come back and lab work be done on a regular basis in order to spot these possible side effects before they move into their next stage.

When you have a mold-related disease, one of the things that you should not do is eat foods that have been manufactured using funguses like mold. This includes things like blue cheese and blue cheese dressing, roguefort, and gorgonzola cheeses, and especially foods that contain mushrooms.

Aspergillosis is caused by those molds that are in the genus Aspergillus. One of the most intriguing and dangerous things about this is that what are called “aspergilloma” have been known to start growing in the lungs and other organs that have pre-existing cavities in them. These cavities can be a result of cancer or a disease that has a similar effect to tuberculosis. Unfortunately, aspergilloma typically do not cause the person to have any symptoms, although in later stages a person might cough up blood, experience weight loss, shortness of breath, and fever.

Penicilliosis is an opportunistic infection that occurs mainly in Southeast Asia where the mold that causes it is indigenous. The vast majority of those who develop this infection are those that have HIV and AIDS and it is the third most common opportunistic infection for these individuals in the region.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Texas Residential Water Damage Restoration Contractors and
Water Damage Restoration companies across the united states.

Discard Molded Foods

If we all kept our refrigerators cleaned out along with keeping an eye on what outdated items exist in it, we would probably all have healthier meals throughout the day. Most people, however, tend to forget just how important cleaning out their fridges can be and just accept the fact that foods will become moldy and that you will have to throw away a fair portion of the food that you store every year. There are a few things that you can do to prevent mold from growing in your refrigerator, but one of the best things is just to simply keep track of what food is in your refrigerator and how long it has been in there.

Some outdated items are fine as long as they have not been opened. Even things like mayonnaise or sour cream can last quite a while as long as they are still in sealed containers. But, after these are opened, their shelf life drastically decreases and the chance that mold will start to grow inside them goes up significantly. When you break the seal on an item such as this, you let the air in your home and your refrigerator inside the container. If mold spores are in the air in your home (and they probably are), these will get inside the container, as well. This does not mean that they will start to grow immediately, but the longer it remains uneaten, the bigger the chance that it will become the home of a mold colony.

Something else to keep an eye on is sour cream. Sour cream is notorious for becoming molded and this is unfortunately one of the foods that cannot be saved once it does. Once you start to see mold spots growing in your tub of sour cream, it is time to throw it out. This is a porous, highly moist food item and like other foods that meet that criteria, once it becomes contaminated by mold on the top, the whole container is, as well.

Other porous items that you might not keep in your refrigerator that are popular with mold are baked items. These are things like bread, cookies, cakes, and just about anything else that you bake in the oven. These should be thrown away and never eaten.

Other moist items in your refrigerator that tend to have mold problems are things like jelly and jam. Other spreads such as marmalade can also become molded if left uneaten long enough, so these should be completely discarded as well as soon as mold spots begin to appear.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Miami water damage restoration companies and
mold remediation companies across the united states.