What would we do without our air conditioners? We count on them so much to keep our homes, cars and places of work cool and comfortable. However, most do not realize the key role that air conditioners also play in our life. Namely removing moisture from our indoor environment.
Why is this important you ask? Well mold and mold spores (seeds) needs three key aspects to start growing.
- Air
- Food
- Water
We can live 3 weeks without food, we can go three days without water, but we can only make it about three minutes with out air. Therefore, removing air from our environment is not possible.
Our homes are filled with ever growing sources of food for mold, from the simple dust that we attempt to control to the very walls. The search for efficient and low-cost ways to construct have introduced various new foods for mold, such as dry wall and fiber board. Both will immediately soak up any water and can grow mold in as little as 24 hours. They are impossible to save once they have come in contact with water.
Water, we do not have extra water in our house, of course not, but do we? If your indoor relative humidity is above 60% then yes you have extra water that will allow for mold growth. This is the easiest and realistically the only one that we can remove from our indoor space to keep mold from growing.
So now that we understand the mold triangle and what we need to do, we need to go back to our air conditioners. In addition to cooling our homes we need them to remove moisture from the air. This is why air conditioners always look they are “leaking”, that is not a leak, but the water removed from our air.
So, all of this makes sense, but it all goes wrong if we don’t use them properly. We need to do the following to avoid mold growth.
- Clean the filters, dirty filters stress the unit and can cause moisture to build up in the wrong places
- Check the drainage of the water, keep the collection pan clean and free of dirt to allow the water to drain
- Run on a regular basis even on the “dry” mode to keep moisture levels inside less than 60%
If you need help with mold today and a long-term plan to prevent mold then reach out to us, Moho Solution.
