Ditra and Exhaust Fans Prevent Water Damage

Even though mold can grow anywhere in your house, there are some rooms that are at risk for developing it more than others and these are generally the places in the home that have a sizeable quantity of water passing through them every day, like the kitchen and the bathroom. These are the two rooms in your home that require the most maintenance and attention in order to keep them in good shape while you are living in your home. However, it really only takes a casual inspection every once in a while to make sure that no problems with mold or water damage are developing.

In the bathroom, the most important surface is the floor. This holds up everything else in the room and if this goes, so does everything else, so preventing water and mold damage to this surface is extremely important. You can do this by making sure that the floor is completely water tight and there is no way for spilled water to get underneath the flooring installed in the room. If it does, it can cause mold to grow and the subfloor to begin rotting. Installing Schluter-Ditra, a waterproofing membrane, will give you an extra bit of protection against this, so if you are remodeling your bathroom, you really want to consider adding this to the room. Any other room that could have a major spill of water like a laundry room or kitchen could also benefit from this.

The ceiling can be just as important, since allowing it to become soaked with water can lead to sagging, cracking, and eventual collapse of the drywall. This happens when the steam and heat in the room goes up to the ceiling and has nowhere else to go. Most building codes have regulations requiring that a bathroom have at least a window or an exhaust vent, but it is best to have both of these, since leaving the window open might not be practical in all cases. Spending a couple hundred dollars and a few hours installing exhaust vents in the humid rooms of the house can help with the maintenance of them and save you money over time.

Something else that you need to do is make sure that water on the floor stays cleaned up as much as possible and that wet items of clothing get washed and dried as soon as possible instead of being left out or thrown in with dry dirty items.

Exhaust Fans and Ditra Prevent Mold

Mold can grow all over the house but there are a few rooms that are a bit more at risk for mold growth than all the others and this is usually due to the amount of inherent moisture that passes through them on a day to day basis. You may not realize it if you are just moving into a home of your own after college or getting out of your parents’ house, but the kitchen and the bathroom are the two areas of the home that require the most attention to keep them in tip top shape over the years (or just months) you will be living there.

All surfaces in your bathroom that are porous are in danger of mold growth, which is why you never want to install a porous flooring material in this room. Materials like hardwood or carpet are very bad for this and other wet rooms of the house like the kitchen and laundry room, so installing something like ceramic tile or sealed stone is going to be much better. Even if you install these hard materials, you can still have problems with mold and water damage underneath them if they are not sealed properly. You should check regularly for missing areas of caulking or grout, since this can allow water to get to the wooden subfloor and cause it to rot. You also need to check for this in the kitchen, since the same problem can come up. You can help prevent it, though, by installing Schluter-Ditra before you put the flooring material in. This is a layer of waterproofing material that will give you an added level of protection against water damage and mold growth.

Another problem appears on the ceiling if there is no vent or fan to allow the steam and heat from the room to escape to the exterior of the house. The ceiling will absorb this moisture since it has nowhere to escape to and will become waterlogged. Mold starts to grow on wet surfaces like this in a relatively short period of time, so making sure that the steam created by the bath or shower gets out is very important. This is also a problem in the kitchen when there is no exhaust system over the stove. You can fix this in both of these areas and other areas of the home with high humidity by installing an exhaust fan that will pull it out of the room with the flick of a switch.