We live in Arizona; there is no mold here, Right?
Well no! Mold only needs three things to grow:
- An appropriate food source, like the paper on the front and back of drywall wood (2×4 in the walls or any other form of cellulose),
- Access to air, and
- Contact with moisture.
But we live in a dry state, it not humid here.
However, our homes are built to keep a relationship of 120 degrees temperatures outside and 78 degrees inside of the home the combination of hot and cold air creates one area for condensation to form, also considered moisture.
We have outside/ground mounted air conditioners that require a unit within the home to circulate the cold air (air handler), another place for condensation to form. Another possible source of condensation would be the refrigerant lines connecting the outside unit to a air handler.
These are examples of what we use every day to induce moisture into our homes, yet there are more ways that stimulate moisture like the amount of people living in the household.
For example, the average household contains 3.5 people, which may cause:
- Excessive usage of showers, especially if a child is part of the household that normally takes two showers per day.
- In addition, on average, people wash their hands about ten times per day, this amount is doubled with kids as they wash their face and hands.
- Also, on average, people tend to flush the toilet nine times per day.
It is starting to add up, well now let us add in:
- Washing dishes after each meal or worse using a dishwasher (they run about an hour and a half ? some have a steam mode).
- We boil water on the cook top and in the microwaves and microwaves expel moisture from the foods we heat in them.
- For conveniences we have indoor laundry rooms that draw the indoor air we just conditioned, then heat will blow through our wet closing and dumps it outside causing more moisture, then we amplified the problem by using a Steam mode if our dryers are equipped with the option.
- Yes, there is Exhaust fan and / or an operative window in our Laundry rooms but people rarely uses them.
All and all that is a lot of moisture we just added to our indoor air.
Like how television pitchmen always say ?but wait there’s more?, let us not forget that people and our animals expel moisture just by existing.