Caring for your home can be a complicated endeavor. If, for example, you don’t check the seals on your doors and windows on a regular basis, you may find yourself dealing with several unwanted insect invaders. There’s a difference between the spiders who make their way into your home and the insects that can put the structural integrity of your home at risk.
One way you can determine whether you have insects in your home is to look for their feces. Unfortunately, to the untrained eye, bug feces often looks like mold. Mold is its own problem once it gets into your home. How can you tell mold and bug feces apart?
What Kinds of Bugs Can Get into Your Home?
As mentioned, there are a few different types of bugs that can get into your home. Ladybugs and spiders, however, are not immediate structural threats. Instead, the bugs you most want to be worried about include:
- Camelback crickets
- Cockroaches
- Carpenter ants
- Termites
What Does Bug Feces Look Like?
Bug feces has a few defining features. For starters, it has a smooth texture. Bug feces tends to form in small pellets, though those pellets won’t resemble a rabbit’s or another small creature’s. Instead, these pellets are small and circular in nature.
Bug feces tend not to cluster together but rather appear in the same general space. If you look up and notice a litany of strange, black dots on your ceiling, you may be dealing with an infestation instead of a black mold growth, which at first glance, may have a similar appearance.
Finally, bug feces tends to remain consistent in coloration. You’ll usually find black or brown feces in your home, whereas mold can come in a litany of different colors.
What Can Bug Feces Do to Your Home?
The concern related to bug feces is not the feces itself, though it is less than pleasant to deal with. Instead, a litany of bug feces tends to indicate that you have an infestation on your hands. Bug infestations—especially when you’re contending with termites, carpenter ants, and similar invaders—are bad news for the overall structural integrity of your home. These critters, if given leave, can tear through your structural supports in what feels like no time at all, compromising both the comfort and safety of the parts of your home that they’ve invaded.
What Does Mold Look Like?
There’s no single type of mold that likes to invade your home. Instead, you’re likely to find yourself dealing with a mold that falls into one of the following categories:
- Allergenic
- Pathogenic
- Toxigenic
While all these molds have different impacts on the health of your home, they all tend to cause respiratory problems in those folks who end up exposed to them. Your family doesn’t need to have a history of allergies or respiratory conditions when mold moves in; instead, that mold will cause these conditions to appear in your loved ones, especially if it’s given the opportunity to linger.
The complexity of mold as a home invader doesn’t stop there, though. It’s not easy to identify mold after it moves into your home. That said, there are a few pervasive traits that carry between the mold families. These include:
- Coloration – Mold comes in a variety of colors, ranging from green to black to pink. It’s that variation that can help you distinguish it from droppings.
- Texture – Mold tends to be fuzzy in appearance, almost like moss. The area where mold has taken root also tends to be damp.
- Growth patterns – Mold tends to cluster together, growing in clumps until it’s firmly settled. If you find yourself contending with larger growths, you may find them spread out through a greater square footage of your home.
What Can Mold Do to Your Home?
As mentioned, mold has a dual effect on your home. It can cause your family members to start developing respiratory problems, even if they don’t have a history that might lend to the development of said conditions. Mold can also negatively impact the value of your home.
Mold tends to appear in homes that are currently dealing with water damage. That water damage—and the mold—can weaken your walls, floors, and structural supports to the point where they’re no longer safe. If you try to sell a home without repairing this kind of damage, you risk losing up to 30 percent of your home’s market value in that sale.
When Should You Contact a Professional?
Whether you’re dealing with mold or insects in your home, there’s no need to try and repair the damage done on your own. Instead, if you suspect that something’s gone wrong, reach out to the professional contractors serving Cincinnati, OH. While these contractors cannot help you remove the insects or mold from your home, they’re masters when it comes to ridding your basement, crawl space, and foundation of related damage. You can schedule a consultation with area professionals at Ohio Basement Authority to first discuss what kind of damage your home’s taken on and what repairs may suit your property best.
Reach out today for a free inspection and repair quote on the services you need to take back your home.
