Mold can negatively impact indoor air quality, especially if someone in your family is allergic to mold. Exposure to mold is harmful to your health and may severely degrade your air conditioner. If you suspect mold in your air conditioner, it’s important to get rid of it and get it professionally cleaned up as soon as possible.
Understanding what might cause mold to grow within an air conditioner is crucial before diving into specifics on elite mold removal. Let’s go even further to learn all there is to know about mold in ACs and how to best eliminate it.
What Are the Reasons Behind the Mold Growth in Air Conditioners?
Air conditioners often provide ideal conditions for mold to grow. It is unlikely that mold would grow on Styrofoam if it were left alone in an air conditioner. Mold development could be encouraged by the constant accumulation of dust that occurs there.
Mold needs both moisture and a fresh food source in order to grow. Humidity levels over 30 percent or a leak or spill that hasn’t been properly addressed are also major contributors to this problem. Since evaporator and condenser coils are major sources of condensation, they can leak water if they are not properly drained. Consequently, mold will grow in this environment.
Here are the most common causes of mold growth in AC units:
Humidity
Indoor air conditioning systems are effective in removing humidity. While this will certainly increase the home’s overall comfort, it may also cause condensation to form when air passes through the AC unit. Mold might form if water leaks are found close to an air conditioner. If the humidity levels in your house are too high, the problem might worsen.
Organic Food
Mold may develop in your home if there is enough organic matter present, which can be provided by dust and other forms of indoor air pollution. Most of these pollutants can cause mold to grow, and most of them can get past air filters and build up in ducts or other parts of the system.
Temperature
Mold grows at ideal temperatures for human comfort. If there is a lot of moisture present, temperatures like this might encourage mold development. The problem is made worse by the fact that the temperature in each room of your house is different.
Blocked Drains
Condensate drains that get blocked lead to excess moisture within the air conditioner, which is ideal for mold growth.
What Are the Health Risks Associated with Mold in Air Conditioners?
If mold has grown inside your AC, you should be quite worried. If mold is growing, it might release spores that are easy to breathe in. In most cases, mold development in an air conditioner is no more harmful than mold growth in any other part of your home. However, since air conditioners are meant to circulate cool air across a place, they would also disperse mold spores throughout a home or room if they were contaminated with the fungus. If the mold spore level is high enough, you will experience a mold issue across the whole home, not just in one location, and you will be breathing in mold spores even while you sleep.
Eye, throat, nasal, and even skin irritation may result from mold. It may also cause you to cough or have wheezing fits. Those who are hypersensitive to mold may experience more severe symptoms. People with weak immune systems or lung diseases like obstructive pulmonary disease can get potentially fatal lung infections from mold.
How to Remove Mold From Air Conditioners?
Many methods exist for removing mold completely. People often use a brush to get rid of the obvious mold, and if they catch it soon enough, a spray of hydrogen peroxide can kill the spores. But it works only in certain spots, and it’s just a temporary fix, as mold may always come back.
Mold around the air conditioner can be painted over, but this won’t kill the spores or stop further growth. Eliminating the mold would seem to be the only viable option for long-term mold eradication. It may be difficult and even dangerous to find the right chemicals and methods for eliminating mold.
All of these techniques can be done from the convenience of your own home, and although they may provide some comfort in the short term, they won’t be effective in the long run as mold will eventually return. Because of this, getting rid of mold completely will require the assistance of an expert.
To get rid of mold for good, you can count on experts. They will move with the utmost care, perform the exclusive mold inspection, and deal with them effectively.