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Common Household Hazards -Asbestos, Radon and Mold…Oh My!

22 min read I recently made a deep dive into risks related to lead lurking in your mid-century home and talked a bit about vile VOC’s off-gassing into the air. This week I’m exploring other common hazards that you may come across in your mid century home.

Let’s explore some common hazards that you may come across in your mid century home.  This is part two of a series. To learn more about lead and VOCs in your paint … check out this post. Here we are going to discuss the asbestos, radon, and mold you might find lurking around your home! Plus, what to do next if you find some!

Like lead and VOC’s, these materials aren’t specific to mid-century homes. They may be present in modern homes and in homes built before the mid-century, so this info is actually important for anyone taking on a home remodel!   Let’s get into it!

Asbestos in MCM homes

Asbestos is a mineral fiber that occurs in rock and soil. It’s got some good properties. It’s a good insulator and it’s fire resistant.

It also has the potential to release fibers that can increase your risk of lung disease or cancer.

Unfortunately, back in the mid-century era, people were far more aware of the former the good qualities than the latter. And they used asbestos in a bunch of places around their spiffy new homes.

You’ll sometimes find asbestos insulation in walls and attics, around pipes and in electrical wiring casements. It shows up in vinyl floor tiles and backing, as well as adhesives. Roofing and siding shingles. It’s also in textured paints like popcorn ceilings, patching compounds and sealants used on walls and ceilings.  

Asbestos: the risks to you and your family

Exposure to asbestos increases your risk of developing lung disease. That risk is made worse by smoking. In general, the greater the exposure to asbestos, the greater the chance of developing harmful health effects.

Undisturbed asbestos presents little risk. The greater risk comes from fibers released into the air when the material is crushed, crumbled or pulverized. Material that is crushable by human force is considered “friable” and you may hear this in reference to asbestos in your home.

Test for Asbestos

This is a place where we follow the “better safe than sorry” rule.

When in doubt, assume that any mid-century tile shingle paperboard glue or area of insulation does contain asbestos. Then, treat it like a dangerous substance until testing confirms otherwise, don’t disturb it. Don’t do construction work adjacent to it. Do not cut into it. Don’t store your stuff next to it. Do NOT let your kids play in it and don’t attempt to remove it yourself before properly testing it.

Again, if you suspect you may have asbestos containing material have it tested BEFORE disturbing it.

I recommend calling a professional to assess the extent of the issue and then to remediate the problem.

What to do if you find Asbestos

This is not an area where you want to cut corners. Qualified professionals will handle asbestos safely, avoid spreading it around other parts of your home, remove it without breaking it up, work wet to keep dust exposure down, disposed of removed material properly, thoroughly clean with vacuums and wiping down the entire area to have a quality and then have the area checked again by a qualified inspector when they’re done.

In some cases, you don’t necessarily need to remove the asbestos but it can be encapsulated. For example, asbestos tile or asbestos glue under tile can be sealed in under another type of flooring material and then left undisturbed in the future. But you want to rely on a licensed professional to make that call.

Long story short, asbestos is not worth messing around with you don’t want to end up with an asbestos related cancer in your family years and years from now because you lived in a little too loudly in your mid-century home.

That said, you don’t need to rush out of your house the minute asbestos is found you simply need to make sure it’s addressed properly before you start messing with the areas where it exists.

Radon in Mid-Century homes

Radon is a naturally occurring odorless and colorless radioactive gas. It is a product of decay and levels are dependent on soil chemistry.  

Radon just hangs out on the ground in some areas of the country and it can leak into your home. Not to be super spooky season. But it comes up out of the ground and you can’t smell it. You can’t see it. And it’s the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US today.

Creep factor: extreme!

Where is radon found in MCM homes?

Radon levels are frequently highest in basements, but because it is a gas, radon will be found throughout a home. The amount of radon that escapes from the soil and enters a house depends on the weather, soil porosity, soil moisture, and the suction within the house. 

It is also a regional risk, with high levels of radon occurring throughout the country. 

We’ve known about radon since the early 1900s, when it was discovered.

But the reason it comes up for mid-century home owners is that radon awareness didn’t really rise to a level of public attention until the 1980s. So homes built AFTER the EPA got involved tend to have radon venting systems built in place but your mid-century home may need to have one retrofitted into place.

What are the radon risks to you and your family?

Radon exposure causes lung cancer. Studies show definitive evidence of an association between residential radon exposure and lung cancer.  You don’t want to screw around with that. So let’s take it seriously.

But, again. Don’t panic. 

Testing for Radon in Mid-Century Homes

The only way to know if you have radon in your home is to test for it.

You can get an in home test from a home improvement store, or possibly a free one from your local state radon program. A radon test may have been included in your home inspection.

What to do if you find Radon?

You can find a qualified professional to install a radon mitigation system through your state’s radon program.  They will seal your foundation with vapor retarders and then install a vent that goes directly from under your floor or basement slab up through the roof to collect potential radon and give it a means to vent past the house into the environment where it will be diluted to the point of harmlessness.

Mold in Mid-Century Homes

Molds are part of the natural environment, and can be found everywhere, indoors and outdoors. Many molds are our friends. Think: bread, beer, cheese, and penicillin. BUT when mold grows out of control it can be dangerous.

Where is mold found in MCM homes?

Mold will grow anywhere that there is moisture. So … be on guard around leaks and roofs windows or pipes, or where there has been a flood. Mold grows on paper cardboard ceiling tiles and wood. It can also grow in dust, in paint, in wallpaper, in insulation, drywall, carpet, fabric, upholstery.

There’s a lot of places that can creep in anywhere there’s too much moisture.

It can turn up as a result of too-long-deferred maintenance when water leaks in through your roof, walls or foundation.

But much more commonly, you’re going to find that mold is a problem that crops up when someone makes a change to an existing house. Be closely on the watch for mold after someone makes a change to the exterior like replacing wood siding with vinyl or painting brick. Both of those moves are a bad idea for several reasons.

Please, don’t paint your mid-century brick!

One of those reasons is that changing the moisture permeability – the way vapor flows around – of your walls can end up trapping moisture INSIDE your house walls. And then creating a great space for mold!

What are the mold risks to you and your family?

Molds have the potential to cause health problems.

Molds produce allergens, irritants, and in some cases, potentially toxic substances. Inhaling or touching mold or mold spores may cause allergic reactions. These include hay fever-type symptoms, such as sneezing, runny nose, red eyes, and skin rash.

Molds can also exacerbate asthma symptoms in people who are allergic. 

What to do if you find mold

You can probably clean up a small area of mold (depending on type) on your own with the right tools. An area of less than ten square feet is usually manageable. Larger areas may require professional clean up.

More important is that mold is caused by moisture. Finding and fixing the source of that moisture is the only way to resolve a mold problem. You may want to contact a trusted contractor for assessment and assistance. Your regional air quality agency may be able to provide referrals to local contractors.    

Resources to deal with hazards found in mid-century homes

And you can always…

In Today’s Episode You’ll Learn:

  • All about some scary stuff that could be hiding in you mid-century charmer!
  • The history of an (almost) undetectable basement lurker…and why you might want to test your home. 
  • Why it’s important to check your closets and corners for a common menace. 

Listen Now On 

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Read the Full Episode Transcript

Does it ever feel like your mid-century house is out to get you? It’s not, I promise. But there may well be a few dangerous things lurking behind, on or in your walls that you need to deal with. Last week we talked about lead and volatile organic compounds.

Here’s part two of our spooky season many series of mid-century house hazards to take care of. If you’ve got questions about asbestos, radon or mold, I will be answering them today. Again, the goal here isn’t to keep you up at night. It’s to share what you need to know to breathe deeply in your home again. Hey there, welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host Della Hansmann architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast, you’re listening to Episode 1408.

Now that we’ve got lead off our list, let’s deal with an array of other common health hazards that can be lurking around a mid-century home. By the way, all older homes have a few of these potential bugaboos. But there are many benefits to owning a mid-century home as well. I don’t mean this episode to put you off your choice of your house, it’s great. It just needs a little love and care to stay that way.

And if you think newer buildings are better and safer, just try googling sick building syndrome. Yikes. But that’s not our topic today. In each of these cases, I’ll be sure to let you know not only what the creepy thing is. Plus how it might affect your health and your families. And how you can test for it, how you can get it back out of your home or properly containing for best health and safety outcomes,. You’re going to be fine.

Now let’s talk about the past and the future of your mid-century home. By the way, if you want to know more about any of this, I’ve assembled some handy references in the show notes page. And I’ll also be adding a list of common mid-century hazards like lead and asbestos. Plus the resources for addressing them to the mid-century ranch resources list. Have you already downloaded this?

I have pulled together over 100 – 107 I think – of my favorite books on mid-century history design and designers helpful blog posts fun mid-century movies and TV social watch the best suppliers and stores to frequent and the collection of other mid-century homeowners to be inspired by plus now the list of house hazards and what to do about them. Grab it at midmod-midwest.com/resources. Or just hit the show notes page at midmod-midwest.com/ 1408.

So as best dose is a mineral fiber that occurs in rock and soil and has some good properties. It’s a good insulator and it’s fire resistant. It also has the potential to release fibers that can increase your risk of lung disease or cancer. Unfortunately, back in the mid-century era, people were far more aware of the former the good qualities than the latter. And they used asbestos in a number of places around their spiffy new homes.

So today, you may find asbestos in a mid-century home in the wall and attic insulation. Especially if it is composed of vermiculite.Vermiculite is a natural mineral that starts out like shiny mica flakes that can be heated to high temperatures then then expands like popcorn. The expanded vermiculite was often used as a simple cheap loose fill insulation in our favorite homes. So if you have an attic filled with weird expanded gray puffy chunks like packing peanuts, but more variegated in color, you want to get that tested.

You’ll also find asbestos in mid-century flooring tiles. And also sometimes in the glue used to stick vinyl flooring to concrete floors. I’ve got that one in my basement.

It’s also in roofing and siding, shingles of certain brands and eras in sound insulation panels and wallboard. And a lot of popcorn ceiling texture from the mid-century era also can contain asbestos. So that’s not great.

And here’s the thing, asbestos exposure causes cancer and other diseases. The EPA recognizes no known safe level of asbestos exposure. However, it is breathing those airborne fibers, there’s what costs you the risks.

So a tile on the floor in your basement that contains asbestos is not going to do anything bad to you whatsoever, as long as it isn’t cracked or fragmented or disturbed. The vermiculite in your attic is fine, mostly as long as it just sits there perfectly still and again, undisturbed, so you don’t need to panic if you find it in your home.

If you find a substance that you think might contain asbestos, the best policy is to collect a sample carefully and send it away for testing here in Wisconsin, you can bag up a sample and ship it or drop it off at the testing at the state lab of hygiene. That’s here in Madison. It’ll cost $45 to sample and they’ll get back to you in two weeks or so. Check your local state for information on other approved testing sources.

This is a place where we follow the better safe than sorry rule. When in doubt, assume that any mid-century tile shingle paperboard glue or area of insulation does contain asbestos and treat it like a dangerous substance until testing confirms otherwise, don’t disturb it. Don’t do construction work adjacent to it. Do not cut into it. Don’t store your stuff next to it. Do NOT let your kids play in it and don’t attempt to remove it yourself before properly testing it.

How worried should you be if you have been disturbing asbestos or potential asbestos? Well, here’s what the EPA has to say on the subject. It is not possible to say whether your exposure may result in disease. exposure to asbestos increases your risk of developing lung diseases including asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. And the disease may not occur until decades after the exposure, the risk of disease increases as the level of duration and frequency of exposure increases, the risk is made worse in smokers.

That’s a roll the dice I don’t like. Still, knowing that you have asbestos somewhere in or on your home when you’re leaving it alone shouldn’t cause you to lose sleep at night, just add it to your overall list of home improvement projects and budget to have it addressed by a professional at your next opportunity. That part addressed by a professional can make otherwise simple remodeling projects a bit more complex and expensive. The government requires that any work done on or about asbestos be done by certified professionals and anything over a very minor repair needs to be properly reported and supervised.

This is not an area where you want to cut corners. Qualified professionals will handle asbestos safely, avoid spreading it around other parts of your home, remove it without breaking it up, work wet to keep dust exposure down, disposed of removed material properly, thoroughly clean with vacuums and wiping down the entire area to have a quality and then have the area checked again by a qualified inspector when they’re done.

In some cases, you don’t necessarily need to remove the asbestos but it can be encapsulated. For example, asbestos tile or asbestos glue under tile can be sealed in under another type of flooring material and then left undisturbed in the future. But you want to rely on a licensed professional to make that call.

Long story short, asbestos is not worth messing around with you don’t want to end up with an asbestos related cancer in your family years and years from now because you lived in a little too loudly in your mid-century home. That said, you don’t need to rush out of your house the minute asbestos is found you simply need to make sure it’s addressed properly before you start messing with the areas where it exists.

All right. Let’s move on to our next mid-century house hazard. Radon. What is it? Radon is a naturally occurring gas. Are we getting a theme here? It’s radioactive. Yeah, and can cause lung cancer. Radon just hangs out on the ground in some areas of the country and it can leak into your home. Not to be super spooky season. But it comes up out of the ground and you can’t smell it. You can’t see it. And it’s the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US today.

I’ve got a link to an EPA provided us radon concentration map in the show notes page. red zones show the highest potential concentration and those exists throughout the West, parts of the Midwest, Appalachia and the Northeast. There are yellow zones medium concentration throughout the southwest, the lower plains states and the eastern border with Canada. Most of the South and the Pacific Northwest are yellow, and likely have low radon levels.

For my fellow Wisconsinites. We are entirely in red or orange on that map. And you should probably assume that you need to check on the radon in your home. The department of health services in Wisconsin says that a home here has a one in 10 chance of problematic radon levels. Now, radon isn’t a mid-century health hazard in the way that other materials built into mid-century homes are it’s just a hazard of homes in radon heavy area. It’s always been around.

And we’ve known about radon since the early 1900s When it was discovered. But the reason it comes up from mid-century homes is that radon awareness didn’t really rise to a level of public attention until the 1980s when there was a nuclear power plant under construction in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

They had already installed the new alarm system to detect dangerous levels of radiation in the workers bodies, but they hadn’t finished construction yet. They hadn’t brought in any nuclear material. And then the alarm system was set off by a construction engineer named Stanley Watras. Que bafflement.

They eventually figured out that Watras had been irradiated not by the offline nuclear plant, but by his own home, where radiation levels were 700 times the safe limit. This is the equivalent of smoking 200 packs of cigarettes a day. The engineer in his family immediately moved out and scientists moved in metaphorically to study the problem.

At that point, the EPA decided to get involved, and it recommended that everyone get their homes tested for radon. So newer homes, homes built after that period, typically come with radon prevention systems, more on that in a minute built right into them. But in an older home, one built in the mid-century like ours, you may need a retrofit. A system built into your home to evacuate radon from the house. Because the risk is high. If you have radon in your home – cancer. You don’t want to screw around with that. So let’s take it seriously.

Again. Don’t panic. It’s pretty straightforward to deal with once you know about it. The only way to know if you have radon in your home is to test for it. You can get an in home test from a home improvement store, or possibly a free one from your local state radon program. There’s also a program through Kansas State University that offers discounted tests you can use.

If you have radon levels in your home of anything more than four picocuries per liter of air sorry, that’s such a cute measurement picocuries per liter of air. Anyway, if you have more than four, you should be a little worried. The EPA recommends that you address levels of anything over two and you want to deal with this. So if you find that you have an unacceptable level of radon in your home, you’re going to hire someone to make a few changes to your house to address it.

They will first take steps to seal it out of your house with vapor retarders sealing and caulking all the cracks of your concrete foundation. And then they’ll cut through the basement floor through the floor slab or into the crawlspace. Whatever the construction style of your home is to place a vent pipe underneath the house that can collect the gas and then an outflow point, usually a PVC pipe that runs up through the house and out the roof so that any radon that is accumulating underneath your home will easily flow up and out through the house rather than into the house.

If you have Stanley Watras levels of radiation in your home, you should be extremely worried. But that’s very unlikely. Still, you want to address any worrying levels of radon in your home quickly. The good news is that this is unlikely to creep up on you. Radon should be checked in your home inspection at or after purchase probably. So if you have an up to date inspection, just check to see if the radon levels have been checked, or an existing radon test has been noted.

Let’s get to the third scary item on the list. Mold. Mold is not a naturally occurring mineral. It’s a microbe that exists in the environment around us molds are millions of years old, and they come in all forms and they come into all homes via doors, windows vents, hvac systems and on our objects and even ourselves.

Molds can be very useful. We use molds to age in flavor cheese. We use molds to leaven bread. To ferment alcohol. Penicillin is made from mold. But when it grows out of control, it can be dangerous. Also, it’s just creepy.

Mold will grow anywhere that there is moisture such as around leaks and roofs windows or pipes, or where there has been a flood. Mold grows on paper cardboard ceiling tiles and wood. It can also grow in dust, in paint, in wallpaper, in insulation, drywall, carpet, fabric, upholstery. There’s a lot of places that can creep in anywhere there’s too much moisture.

Now occasionally mold is a longtime problem and an older home. This usually happens when it has been…long term maintenance issues have gone unaddressed. When leaks have been slowly penetrating into the house when moisture has been seeping in through some crossbridge point. But much more commonly, you’re going to find that mold is a problem that crops up when someone makes a change to an existing house.

You want to be on the watch for mold. If you or someone else has recently painted your existing brick or replaced existing siding with vinyl. Both of those choices can dramatically change the way your house breathes. And the architects’ rule of thumb for moisture in walls is that some moisture will always get into a wall system. Might be from rain seepage, maybe humidity, perhaps especially when hot, humid air outside the house hits an insulation barrier and the cooler air inside. That temperature differential can make the moist air condense on the cooler surface. Then you have moisture and water inside the wall.

That’s all fine. As long as you follow the second half of that architect’s rule of thumb, moisture will always get in, so you must always provide a way for it to get out. Long story short though, when you paint or wrap a house and vinyl, you change that system of your wall. The permeability of your home’s outer surface. Paint over brick means the textured breathable masonry has just been coated in a solid layer of latex. Vinyl siding is essentially the same as plastic wrapping your house. You seal in moisture that used to be able to work itself out in more different ways.

And that can cause mold to build up invisibly inside your exterior walls. Moisture and mold therefore can also turn up in your home in other spots. Many mid-century bathrooms were not properly vented originally. That’s because the former code requirement for light vent in a mid-century home assumed an operable bathroom window and the original mid-century homeowners would have habitually cracked a window to let out excess moisture as needed.

But now, as we air conditioned our homes more aggressively and we’re used to bath vent fans, we don’t necessarily think to open a window when we shower even if there’s not a fan. Even if your bathroom does have a fan, you want to make sure that it’s venting properly out of the roof or an adjacent sidewall rather than just dumping moist air into your attic. Because guess what that might do? Make mold.

Mold carries different levels of risk at different levels. A little mold can cause cold allergies or respiratory irritation. Think a stuffy nose sore throat coughing, maybe burning eyes and a skin rash. Not great, but more extreme mold exposure becomes more dangerous, and it’s particularly dangerous for people with asthma or who are allergic to mold, they may have severe reactions to even a small amount. Immune compromised people and people with chronic lung diseases may get infections in their lungs from mold. Long term exposure or intense exposure can cause severe issues that lasts a long time or cause irreversible damage.

A personal anecdote on this is that when I was in graduate school, I volunteered in the city of Biloxi, Mississippi to help clean up and rebuild after the city had been deeply flooded by Hurricane Katrina. The storm surge had washed over low lying areas and many homes in those spots had been flooded to the eaves. Some were considered a total loss by insurance afterwards. I went down the spring break immediately after the storm, and then again half a year later, to stay for a semester and help with rebuilding. My role was largely in assessment and design solutions, but other volunteers I served with helped in other ways.

By the time I’d spent the bulk of my time there, most of the direct damage had been cleared out flooded homes existed as empty shells. The roof, wood structure and foundation were all that remained and everything inside from personal possessions to furniture to drywall had been stripped and landfilled. That work was done by the so called mold crews, sometimes known as moldies among the volunteers who were supposed to dress in Tyvek suits and wear respirators to clear the houses of debris.

But it was common knowledge that among the volunteers, those molds hadn’t all been as cautious as they could have been. After all, they were working hard labor in hot conditions, they sometimes stripped down, and many of them seems to be experiencing new asthma like symptoms coughing, shortness of breath, and more. We all worried about them. And I still wonder to this day, what lasting damage they may have done to their young bodies by exposing themselves to so much dangerous mold.

In your home, you’re unlikely to encounter such an extreme situation. How will you figure out though if you have mold to deal with? Well, in some cases, you’ll just see it. If you see dark, discolored or lightly discolored areas on your walls or surfaces, you’ve got mold or possibly mildew. Any slimy or powdery texture, that’s certainly mold. If you see mold on your walls or ceiling, you want to deal with that ASAP, but it can also be hiding and harder to spot places.

Mold often hangs out behind wallpaper in kitchens or bathrooms inside vent ducts in your attic or behind the walls in your basement. I found mold behind the wooden paneling on the walls in my 1960s remodel era basement was one of those finished basements that still has the concrete floor with laminate tile on top of it. And the walls were half drywall above with a really amazing sort of settler design wallpaper. And then horizontal pine knotty pine paneling below. I saved that knotty pine paneling, but I did need to remove it because I discovered that behind it the furring strips that set it apart from the concrete wall were black or green with the moisture they’d picked up from the floor, or maybe had just condensed against the cool basement block walls when the basement air was warmer.

In any case, I took this as my excuse. Well, my necessary reason to remove the paneling. Which I salvaged for future use. And to re-lay out the basement in a new way that I thought was more interesting, I might have been inclined to preserve the basement as it was had there not been mold damage. But given the fact that I did have an un-remediateable amount of mold hiding behind the walls, I had to remove everything down to the concrete in order to address the moisture situation, re-insulate the basement and prevent future mold from building up.

Now you want to watch out for mold forming spontaneously also in the walls in the corners have closed off outside parts of your house. If they aren’t exposed regularly to circulating heated air. In my home, this means I keep an eye on my front hall closet. Since it’s an outside corner of the house, it’s not super well insulated. And when I keep that closet door closed at all times, it means it never really warms up in there.

But it does still have access to the more humid indoor air in the winter. And the point where the conditioned air touches that cold corner is a place where moisture accumulates and then so does mold. The solution would be to cut a vent into either the closet door or the adjacent dining room wall, maybe two vents high and low for ideal circulation. So warmer air could circulate through the closet. But I’ve been too lazy to do that. So for now, I just occasionally spot check usually seasonally to make sure that no moisture is accumulating in that spot. In my bedroom closet a similar corner condition I just leave the door open.

If you’re worried about hidden mold, you may want to call in a professional to check if there’s a trouble spot. But it’s important to note that the CDC does not actually recommend testing for mold in the sense of they don’t recommend evaluating how much mold you’ve got. If you have any amount of mold in your home, it could be harmful to a sensitive person. So they simply recommend that you remediate and prevent future mold growth in any amount.

There’s not an amount you can test for and say oh, that’s fine. You just want to go. If you’ve got mold, start by getting rid of it. This would mean involving throwing away moldy possessions, removing moldy drywall, furniture, carpet, etc. You’ll then clean them all the areas with bleach using plenty of fresh air and protective equipment. Be aggressive about that to prevent it from coming back.

You can coat previously moldy surfaces with mold inhibiting paint. Kilz is a popular brand. I spent many an hour painting Kilz primer on to the studs and rafters of the Biloxi Mississippi home that my team and I rehabbed down after Hurricane Katrina before we set about building back new finishes. Then control for moisture. Check your humidity and problem areas, you should aim for an indoor air humidity of 50% all day and all year.

You can control that by running or installing more dehumidifiers. You can run the AC, but also make sure that you have good air circulation into and from your affected areas. And make sure that your HVAC system is sized properly for your house.

This is actually something that can go wrong quite often, because it’s not an area where bigger is better. Although the more bro-ey and less engineer oriented installers may think so. An air conditioning unit that is too big for the volume of your house will rapidly cool your house before it can thoroughly dehumidify it. That results in not only an unpleasant, clammy feeling to the cool air in your house in summer. Whereas if you actually dehumidify but don’t cool, you’ll feel more pleasantly temperatured. You can get the setpoint in your house higher in the summer for the same value of comfort. But also that clammy, to quickly cooled air from an oversized air conditioning unit is allowing for potential mold.

So insulate and check your vapor barriers. In cold climates, it’s gonna be essential. Warm air carries more water than cold so that danger of condensation at the wrong spot inside your walls is real. And if you ever experience a flood or a leak that soaks your floor walls or structured, make sure to clean it up and dry out the area thoroughly within 48 hours. And then maybe still consider a mold preventing primer.

So, how worried should you be about mold in a mid-century home? I mean, you should take it seriously. This is definitely a stitch in time saves nine situation. A little mold in a cold damp corner can be wiped up with a bleach a sponge and forgotten about. But mold hiding inside the walls can become truly dangerous. Ultimately, this is the biggest concern for households where children are very young, or where someone is immunocompromised or suffers from acute respiratory issues.

Once you’re aware of a mold problem, you should take it extremely seriously. But there’s no reason to expect that your Mid-century home will suddenly develop a mold issue out of the blue unless you’ve recently or some previous owner has relatively recently taken steps to change the way moisture moves through your house.

In that case, keep a sharp out for a while any change in siding or newly painted exterior material could be a risk factor for mold. So hashtag. Please don’t paint your mid-century brick. For an entire podcast episode on reasons not to paint your mid-century brick in addition to keeping mold out of your life, check out episode 1106.

So to recap, there are some nasty things that sometimes lurk in a home like yours or mine. You’ve got to watch out for asbestos. It might be built into your home in ways that were intended to be helpful but turned out to be harmful. If you live in a high risk area of the country you want to check for radon levels, especially in your basement. Because your home may have been built before we had a common cultural awareness that this was even a hazard and make sure that you have an existing or install a new radon remediation system.

And if your home has suffered maintenance attrition over time that’s led in unwanted moisture or if you or a previous owner have done something to your home’s exterior like adding vinyl siding or painting your brick that would change the moisture permeability of your walls. You want to check on any potential mold formation.

It might seem like I just gave you a checklist of boring but alarming adults type tasks. Things you now need to add to your home improvement budget that will take away from your overall plans to make your home more your own or delay the start of the time on getting to the good part of remodeling. But from another point of view, this is just one part of the holistic Master Plan home improvement process.

Even bumming news like there’s mold behind the basement paneling can mean that you’re freed up to adjust the floorplan of your basement. Learning you’ve got asbestos in your attic is not good news. But while you’re having it addressed, you can re-insulate and improve the weather tightness of your home and maybe punch in some new skylights as well.

Addressing mid-century house hazards is another line item in your eventual whole budget. But I would love for you to see it as part of the bigger picture of your lifetime in your home. And I hope you’ll take the time for even a spot check of a master plan thinking before you get into the weeds on one thing at a time fixes.

So to that end, let me point you to next week’s episode, I’m going to be talking about how to plan a remodel in 30 days or less. More time is always better, of course. But if you don’t have much, you should use what you have wisely, and I’ll tell you exactly how to do that next week. Find the show notes for this episode at midmod-midwest.com/1408.  And stay tuned next week when we talk about how to plan an improvement for your house. Fast.

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