If you’ve ever had an overflowing sink, a leaking dishwasher or a burst pipe, you know it can quickly lead to bigger problems if it’s not handled properly. The key to preventing water damage and mold growth is to act fast. Here are a few places to start: Stop the water source and start drying immediately. Use fans to circulate air over wet surfaces, and if possible, rent a dehumidifier from a local hardware store to speed up moisture removal. Acting within the first 24 to 48 hours is critical—mold can form if the water sits beyond that time, and using a fan at that point could spread spores and worsen the damage. Use caution with carpeted areas. If the water has soaked into your carpet, you’ll need to go a step further. Lift the carpet from the tack strips and remove the padding underneath—it’s difficult to dry and can hold moisture that leads to mold. Once the padding is out, fold the carpet back over itself and aim fans to dry both the subfloor and the carpet backing. After the area is fully dry, you can lay the carpet back down and continue drying the top surface to ensure no moisture remains trapped. Know when to call a professional. If you’re not making progress with your drying efforts or the water has been sitting for more than 48 hours, it’s time to call a water damage restoration specialist. They have the equipment and expertise to handle deeper moisture issues and prevent long-term damage like mold growth and structural weakening.

How to Manage a Minor Indoor Flood

By Dave Keith Owner of NBE Property Restoration Diamond Certified Expert Contributor

3 Ways to Prevent Mold and Water Damage

Combating Mold in the Home

Mold Testing: Is It Worth It?

Video: Combating Mold in Your Home

If you have a mold problem in your home, it's important that you learn how to deal with it as well as common mistakes to avoid. Today, we're in Santa Rosa with diamond certified expert contributor Dave Teeth of North Bay Environmental to learn more.

So you've got mold on your wall, what should you do? What I recommend is to put plastic on it. You could take a plastic garbage bag or you could take just visqueen, a piece of plastic cut out the square, and then put duct tape around and seal all the edges. That's what you should do, cover it up so it doesn't spread. 

What shouldn't you do? Don't put a fan on mold. The problem with putting a fan on mold, you may have good intentions that you want to dry out, maybe the wall is wet or the floor is wet, you're gonna dry it out but you're actually causing a lot of harm because think of a mold spore as a dandelion in your lawn and you're blowing those spores all over your house, creating a much bigger problem potentially. So I never recommend putting a fan on mold, the best way to dry out anything that's wet that has mold is with a dehumidifier.

One of the most common things I'm asked about is bleach, should I put bleach on mold and the answer is you can and but I want you to be careful about bleach because the byproduct of bleach is actually can be more harmful than mold. So the proper way to put bleach on mold is to dilute it to a 10% bleach to water solution, spray the bleach on the mold and let it sit for at least 10 minutes, however, if you have mold on drywall, you put bleach on it you can wipe it off but that's like pulling weeds in your lawn, you've got the weed but you may not have gotten the roots and that is why many times the mold continues to grow back in the county that we live in humidity level humidity levels can be more than 60% which is great for mold, so you can pull those weeds you can get the surface of it but the roots are still there in the drywall and the mold can continue to grow even without a normal water source that would have been there but with just humidity in the air.

Another question I'm commonly asked is should I test for mold I want to know what kind of mold I have and the answer is maybe. I don't always recommend testing for mold because from a remediation standpoint I don't care what kind of mold it is, it could be stachybotrys it could be Penicillium but from a remedial standpoint treating it is exactly the same and so I don't always recommend testing ahead of time because you might just be wasting your money if you could see mold it's probably mold so you need to fix it there are a lot of test kits that are out there and you send it off to a lab and you spend money and get it back and say yep, it's mold I could save you a lot of money by just saying it's probably mold let's get it taken care of and figure out the right way to do it to learn more from local top rated companies visit our diamond certified expert reports at experts diamond certified org.