Mold And Your New Home

Say that you’re having a new home built for you. Imagine your surprise when you discover after it’s done that it’s infested with mold! What a nightmare that would be! Most people don’t think about the possibility of mold actually being built into their homes when the contractor is in the process of building it. How can this happen?

Sometimes building materials that have mold on them are used in the house’s construction and the contractor and/or his supervisors don’t assess the quality of the materials before using them. The best thing you can do to prevent mold from being built into your new home are to inspect the building materials and test them yourself.

Sometimes the materials bought to build your home with are stored outside directly on the ground and in cases where it rains on them and the humidity is high, mold can and will begin to grow on these items, depending on how long they are left there. Both building materials and the entire home itself should be covered with plastic sheeting at the end of each day to make sure the part of the home that is already completed and the materials it is being built with are safe from rain. Until the walls and roof of the house are installed and are completely able to keep out rain and other kinds of precipitation, it should be covered each and every day of the construction.

The home sometimes isn’t tested for mold growth as it should and when it should be, which is during the home’s construction and after it is finished. Although some people choose to do mold testing during and after their new home’s construction on their own (as they should), it is the job of the contractor to make sure the integrity of the structure is not compromised by anything, including mold. You could sue the contractor if you discover the mold contamination after the home is already built, but who wants to build a home for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars just to find out that you can’t live in it? Nobody I know of.

The modern materials that we use to build homes these days, including drywall and plywood, are things that mold love to eat. Most homes are built recently have some amount of these materials in them, though, and sometimes it can’t be helped unless you want a more expensive alternative.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
New Jersey Sewage Damage Cleanup and other states such as
New York mold remediation companies across the united states.