Preventing Damage From Wildfires

If you live in an area that is prone to wildfires, such as certain areas of California, you should do what you can to protect your home from them. While it may seem pretty hopeless once a wildfire is on a path that will go straight through your home, there are some things that you can do to try and minimize the damage.

The first thing that you can do if you own your home is to outfit it with fire resistant materials. The roof is perhaps the most important surface that you should take care of, since it is the largest surface of the home that is exposed to sparks of fire that have become airborne. If there is a wildfire near your house, you should take your water hose and keep the roof wet as much as possible to stop this threat. Fire-resistant roofing materials are large in number and include tile, metal, and fiberglass. Any oil-based roofing material should be replaced and wooden shingles are a disaster waiting to happen.

Fire-resistant materials should also be used to build the walls and windows of the house, since this can impede the spreading of the fire to the interior. Stone, metal, and brick offer a decent amount of protection, but vinyl siding and wood provide extremely little. The windows are important because heat will radiate inside the house and possibly set drapes on fire, so having smaller windows in homes that are at risk is a good idea.

Another thing that you can do to your lawn if a wildfire is nearby is wetting it with the water hose. This can also slow the fire’s spread to your house some. Do not allow dead leaves and other debris to build up in the yard during wildfire season and try to get rid of any tree branches that are hanging over your house. You can even go as far as to have these trees that are close to your home removed, but that is a personal preference. It will help, but some people may not want to sacrifice them.

If you have to evacuate, realize that you cannot take everything with you. Take only the most important valuables and get out as soon as you can. If you have time and are leaving voluntarily, take the opportunity to wet your yard, roof, and the exterior of your house again. This is pretty much all you can do at this point and the rest is in the hands of nature.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
New York Sewage Damage Clean-up and other states and cities such as
North Carolina Water and Sewage Extraction companies across the united states.

Remove Mold, Do Not Just Kill It

Unfortunately, when most people think about mold and mildew in their homes, they immediately want to know how they can kill it. While killing the mold can solve part of the problem and stop it from continuing to spread throughout the rest of the house, it will not stop it from affecting your health. About 29% of the population is allergic to mold or mildew (which are the same thing, in general) and even though the mold has been killed by whatever cleaner you decided to use for the job, the body still recognizes mold and its spores as something foreign that it should defend itself against.

So, if killing the mold is not the problem, then what is? Removing it completely from the property is often the only solution to be found. This can mean simply scrubbing it off a surface or removing everything in the home found to be contaminated with it. Mold that has embedded itself into a slab of drywall is extremely difficult to remove and you are often much better off simply replacing that portion of the drywall instead of trying to get rid of the mold. The mold is likely still alive in the center of the piece, so the contamination will only return to the surface, anyway.

Moldy clothes can sometimes be saved if they are not stained too badly, but items like leather that become molded are often unsalvageable due to their organic nature. The role of mold in the outdoor environment is to decompose dead organic matter and without it, dead tree stumps and carcasses from many, many years ago would still litter the forest floor, so it is a necessary part of the natural world. This does not mean that we have to allow it to thrive in our homes, though.

Where there is water damage, mold usually follows. Molds require moisture of some sort to survive and grow and any water that is spilled in your home needs to be cleaned up as soon as possible. Mold will start to grow on moist items within about 48 hours, so getting it cleaned within this timeframe is recommended. Try to prevent plumbing leaks and wet floors and walls as much as you can and keep the humidity in your home down to help prevent mold growth.

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

Renovating a Home with Mold and Water Damage

House flipping is still pretty popular, but as more and more people discover that the whole flipping enterprise is not as easy as the television shows make it out to be, less are getting brave enough to venture into it. Anyone that does their research and makes informed decisions before trying to flip a property should do just fine in this business, but as some shows will let you know, not everyone falls into this category. If you are seriously thinking about getting into flipping homes for some quick cash, you have got a lot of homework ahead of you.

Take some real estate classes at your local community college if they are available. If they are not, no one says that you have to have a degree in real estate to flip a house. Get online and do your research there, but make sure the sources are credible.

Researching the rules of real estate for your local area is not the only thing you need to do; you will also want to do quite a bit of research into the more handy aspects of the project. Outsourcing all the work that needs to be done to the home will eat up your profit a lot faster than you think it would, so consider trying to do a lot of the simpler things yourself. You may not be able to do the electrical and plumbing work on your own, but painting the interior is something that most people have the physical and mental ability to do.

Some of the more hidden troubles you may run into are mold and water damage, which tend to go hand in hand. Where there is water damage that has been left untended to, there is often mold growth and this will shine a definite negative light on your property when you put it on the market if it is not taken care of. Your property should be virtually unblemished at the time you put it up for sale. Make sure that the property is mold free if you want the highest return on your efforts and be ready to prove it with a certificate from a mold inspector. Most home buyers will not even consider a home contaminated with mold.

If there is water damage to the home, figure out if it was caused by something natural such as a flood or an accident or if it was something to do with the plumbing. If the home is very old, consider updating the plumbing system with a more efficient one to prevent future problems.


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

Renovating a Home With Mold

The house flipping craze is not all that old and people often jump right into it without doing much research about anything, whether it is the cost of the materials necessary to renovate a property, the building codes for the area that need to be followed, or what it takes to repair certain kinds of damage to a home. If you do your research before deciding to get into the housing market, you should do just fine, but if you do not, you are liable to get burned pretty easily.

One thing that many first time flippers do not think about is the issue of mold growing in the property they are trying to renovate and flip. If you run into mold when trying to renovate a property of any kind, you need to know just what it will take to get rid of that infestation, because no one is going to want to buy it with it as-is. You cannot just cover up the contamination, because you will be liable for it later unless your contract with the buyer specifies that the sale is an “as-is” one.

Mold can be cleaned from these properties often, but sometimes the infestation can be more widespread than you might think that it is, so mold testing is necessary before you decide to put the house on the market. Sometimes entire slabs of drywall or building lumber need to be removed in order to completely get rid of it. Using bleach to rid the property of the contamination can work on hard surfaces like tile, but when it comes to getting it off of drywall, this will not be a great option. If it is embedded into the wall, the whole slab will need to be removed.

Also be aware that you should not touch mold growth with your bare skin. Use latex gloves and respirators when you have to remove drywall and suspect that there is mold behind it.

If you do have to do a lot of new wall construction in the home you are renovating, it is probably a good idea to invest in some paperless drywall. Mold loves to eat the paper on both sides of the drywall that you hang in your home, but if you remove the paper, the chances for mold growth are significantly reduced because they do not have as much material to eat.

Also, invest in some mold and mildew resistant paints when you start re-painting the home. This will help keep the infection either from returning or starting anew.



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

The Affect of Mold on Your Pets

If you have pets, you probably care for them about the same as you would care for the rest of your family. They are a part of most of our lives and have been for thousands of years, but unfortunately, they are not able to communicate to us with words that there is something wrong with them. Sometimes we notice symptoms or signs of disease or of pain, but they cannot really tell us what is wrong or where it hurts.

One example of this unfortunate situation is when mold spores form a yeast infection inside the body of the animal and by the time you notice symptoms, it is too late and it has to be put to sleep. This is a horrible situation for a pet owner to be in, but if you have mold in your home, you may not realize that there is anything wrong with your pet until the outcome is unavoidable. If you are experiencing allergy symptoms when you have no known allergies or suspect that there may be mold in your home, you should have the property inspected as soon as possible.

The symptoms of mold allergies are often the same as normal allergy symptoms, but the presence of mold can aggravate the allergies that you already have. Children, infants, the elderly, and pets are the most susceptible to health complications resulting from mold and if you are experiencing problems, odds are good that your pets are, as well.

Some mold remediation companies have even taken to the inhumane practice of using dogs to detect mold growth in homes. This is cruel and particularly unusual, since we as human beings are told repeatedly to never inhale mold spores, since they can lodge in the lungs and possibly lead to what is called aspergilloma (fungus balls) growing inside the body. There are often no symptoms of this until the infection is very advanced.

Birds are also particularly sensitive to changes in their atmosphere and physical environment. Keeping a bird, especially an expensive and exotic one, in a home that has a significant mold spore count in the air is not advised at all. This is not only for the sake of the animal, but also for the sake of your own investment.

If you believe mold is in your home and your pets are being affected adversely by it, take them to your veterinarian as soon as you can.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
North Carolina Basement water damage restoration and other states and cities such as
New Jersey Basement water damage restoration companies across the united states.